Packages!

"Here's the mail, it never fails/

It makes me want to wag my tail/

When it comes I want to wail- MAIL!"

Yeah, that's the mail song from Blue's Clues.  Mail excites me so much that I am reduced to a four year old state of mind.  :)  I know, I'm a dork.

So, like I told you, we had a notice on our door when I got home yesterday.  After staring at it in wonderment, I figured out that it was a package notice!  So, Ian and I skipped running this morning to hop in a cab and go to the post office.  We don't know how to say "post office" or even "mail," so when we got in the cab, I just handed him the slip.  I feel like if that works for Amazing Race contestants, it can work for us.  Still, I should probably learn those words.  I do know how to say "It's delicious!" --> "B/Ma cho-tah!"  It's important to know how to say that here.  It's very important to people that you like the food.

Anyway, on to the packages.

I think I've seen multiple post offices in town.  This one is in a part of town we've never been to.  I didn't take pictures of the inside (I didn't want to get into trouble), but it looks more like a high end bank than a post office.  After some waiting and awkward silences (language barrier limits small talk with strangers), we signed for our packages.  They got here very fast.  It only took seven days.

Fra-geel!  We were stoked.  Ian didn't let me carry one.  I think he was worried I'd drop it.  We resisted looking at them too much because they post what's in them on the outside and we wanted to be surprised.  We did quite well.

We stopped at Paris Baguette for brekky.  That's Ian's giant pastry there with his orange juice.  I had a heart shaped pink donut with my tea (I think today's was scorched rice or barley, I had roasted corn tea the other day). 

This a butcher shop out the window (from where we ate).  It has pictures of calves and piglets on the side of it.  I've seen a lot of pictures like this (happy animals in their serene habitats) on butcher shops.  I think it's an extreme form of the "farm facade" that you see in America.  Korea has a terrible system of factory farming.  After all, there is no space here.  You want people to believe the food they eat was healthy in life and therefore healthy for them to eat.  Unfortunately, that's not so much the case. 

As I mentioned, our adventure took us to a new part of town.  There seem to be a lot of cafes in this part, which is pretty cool.

A Hilton Cafe.  Complete with strange sculpture.  I feel like the Hilton family/company doesn't even know this exists.

You may remember that I talked a bit about garbage in an earlier post.  Well, here are some photos to show you what the streets can be like.

A garbage pile waiting for pick up.

A close up.  Krispy Kremes!  We haven't seen the company here yet, but here is evidence!

These older ladies go around and pick up the loose trash.  It seems a little futile to me, but it's nice that people care.  It has been awhile since I played with autoshapes, so I added a big arrow for fun (and in case you didn't see her).

Then we hailed a cab and went home to open our surprises.

Ian and I each opened one box.  Of course, Ian didn't manage to take a picture of me.

The first ("Essentials") box. Not pictured: My Mom's homemade "Bug Me Not."

Second ("Halloween") Box.  Those poor Tostitos were the only things that didn't survive very well.  We still intend to eat every crumb.

Our t.v. is more a mantel than anything else.  We don't have cable or a dvd payer (other than our laptops).  So, we've put my birthday cards and the ghost Robbie and Danie gave us on it.  The ghost glows and changes color.  I know it's a bit premature, but I think it's cute and I LOVE Halloween.  They also gave us Halloween wax-candy fangs.

o_O - Rawr!  I was very careful with them.  I didn't bite down or drool on them.  I want them for Halloween day/night.  They smell like cherries syrup.

Good night!  I hope you got at least a fraction of the enjoyment out of our mail as we did.