I made french toast again this morning. It was sickeningly sweet, mainly because the last time I made it, I didn't have vanilla or milk. Well, the milk was sweetened and I got vanilla AND I was generous with the sugar. Yikes. Good, but a little too doce.
I wrote myself a note to talk about the mail service. It's tempting to leave it at two words -
IT'S SLOW
but that isn't very descriptive. It's slower than honey in Siberia. But like everything else here, there's a good reason for that.
First of all, very few people have a way to receive mail here. There are a couple hundred PO boxes for most of C--- and no hand delivery, if that gives you any idea. My host father in B--- got mail through the agricultural school, which has a PO Box. Blake and I have a PO box. Does that make me feel like I'm living at the level of the community? But, rather, is it necessary? Yes, it is, but still seems like overkill...
Secondly, when you define the people who matter to you as your family and your neighbors, there's not a big reason to get or send mail other than to get junk mail, items you bought from catalogues, and bills. Thus...
There's very little infrastructure to support a fast system without making sending or receiving items outrageously expensive. So things arrive in their own time - quite literally, in fact. It's not strange at all to receive mail from mid-November and mid-December at the same time in February when you just got mail from January a week ago!
Which is OK because it's kind of like Christmas come mail time. You have NO idea what you're going to get. Or, for that matter, a box of chocolates :)
I can't wait for Monday when I'll have some idea of what to expect in terms of work for the next two years. My plate's already full, starting an Ultimate Frisbee league and joining an established AIDS education theater group, but I can't do very much with any of them just yet. So it's hurry up and wait mode until Monday, when it might be more of the same.
And may I emphasize my daily closing,
PEACE
John
