Mailing home

I always have really good intentions of buying little things (or cards) to send to all ya'll back home, to let you know we think of you and miss you often....but it tends to get stuck somewhere either in the idea stage or in our apartment and never quite makes it to the post office. At least not as often as I'd like.  We finally mailed some things home....Just so you know, one of the reasons it takes so long to make it happen is the huge process it feels like to mail something.  I know, I know, it could be worse but it's not as simple as sticking something in our  mailbox or a blue collection mail box close to home.

To mail something, we walk a fair distance, carrying everything, up crazy hills and around odd walkways like this:

We sit in long lines, buy odd packaging that has to be used, and sit writing out addresses and our Korean return address like this:

There is usually a lady guard who watches over us, with a gun strapped to her waist.  No joke.  I have no idea why - the bank doesn't have armed personnell but the post office?  Watch out!  No stealing envelopes around these parts, that's serious business.

And Caleb usually has ample time to practice his patience....

Then we take a good 20 minutes of trying to explain to the lady behind the desk that no, we don't want to pay extra insurance on the already expensive shipping rates....usually it takes her adding it all up and us telling her "no - too expensiva" and her getting confused, checking it all, trying to give us the price again with us again saying "no -too expensiva - no insurance - cheap, cheap" and then her re-adding it all up AGAIN without the insurance price.

It's usually quite the ordeal.  So I know, excuses excuses, right?  But now if you get something in the mail, you know how it got to you!  =)  We usually get a good chuckle out of the whole ordeal by the time we head home.