The third of the original set of packages sent to us from the U.S. has finally arrived. To be more precise it’s been sitting in a postal sorting facility for two and a half weeks while we tried to find someone who could think of a way to find it for us. The peculiar thing is that the address on it was perfectly clear. The only thing missing was–once again–a phone number. I truly don’t understand why the post office here can’t just deliver a notice to our mailbox. I know they used to do that, but they appear to have gone paperless (a strange but progressive way to run a post office). It seems that it was separated from its brethren after a postal worker accidentally burst open one of its edges while using it as a soccer ball. They probably didn’t realize it was mostly full of books, and books make terrible soccer balls. Thankfully, it appears that nothing fell out–how I don’t know–but I’m not going to complain.

At any rate we got our package, which is good. But the most exciting part of the trip was carrying it home on my bicycle. My rope skills leave much to be desired, but I managed to keep it attached to my bike the whole way home. The trip was given extra zest by the fact that the only construction free route back home for a bicycle involved riding the wrong way down one way streets. I’ve tried to avoid doing that, but I finally gave in and went with the flow of bicycles and motor scooters flagrantly ignoring traffic law (not that the police seem to care). After all, when in Rome …