Packing up…
March 23, 2009
I’ve been traveling around the world since…well, alone since I was sixteen. I have, in total, recieved six honest-to-god, handwritten letters during my entire time abroad. No packages.
It isn’t that my family doesn’t love me, we just don’t have that “I need things from you” kind of relationship. So, imagine my surprise when, halfway through a class on Thai Language (where I figured out that my chances of saying what I want to say are astronomically small…five tones means that each word (if you managed to have the correct sounds) has only a 20% chance of being correct. Add words for smaller percentages. I think I came up with a nice, round .01% chance of anything I say being what I wanted to say) there were two packages in the corner and one was for myself and a good friend of mine on the same abroad trip.
We were pretty surprised. When asked by curious, highly-bored, tonal-sick students what it contained we had to respond with ignorance. That is, until a student smarter than ourselves read the customs statement.
“Candy Bars.” He read.
“Badass.” We responded.
The box was opened with my glorious pocket knife (I’ve never traveled with one before, and I don’t know if I’ll ever travel without one after this. Wine bottle opener, beer bottle opener (though I’ve mastered the “hook on concrete and punch” opening technique), various selection of knives, scissors, even tweezers and a makeshift screwdriver. And canopener. It is, in fact, god-in-metal/plastic form) and the goods were shared. We had so many extra candy bars and just kept passing them around. Either they had multiplied during the long and boring trip they had over here or we had a loaves & fishes moment. But with Hershey’s, and without old fish.
Afterwards, I went to the doctor and found out that I shouldn’t eat any more dairy or sugar to see if what is wrong with me is simply diet-related.
Luckily I finished the last of my chocolate bars seconds before leaving for the clinic.