The Good: A few days ago we received our first package! Not only that, but it was three (three!) smaller packages – which was quite smart of Kabob’s mom – and the postman delivered it right to our door. The best part – they came in exactly seven days. A miracle from heaven. Mail service still seems rather random here, however. My mom sent a package on March 9, and it still hasn’t arrived. But in those three padded envelopes, Kabob’s mom managed to squeeze in 22 items of clothing for Chickpea, a book, and…something else I can’t remember off the top of my head. It’s morning, and I’m still drinking my coffee.

The Bad: The cool spring breeze is gone, and it’s now summer. We still haven’t bit the bullet and bought an AC, but we need to soon. There’s no central AC here, they only option in the country is wall units. We’d love to get by with just one, but we may have to buy two. We’ll see. At about $800-$1,000 a pop, we’ll need the cool air to revive us from the sticker shock. A lot of families just have one AC in the main living room, and everyone sleeps there all summer, like a giant family slumber party.

The Ugly: Milk. Have I told you our debilitating milk situation? There are only two types of milk for purchase here – daily milk and long-life milk. Daily milk tastes good – for about 12 hours. It goes downhill really fast, so when they say daily, they really mean daily. It comes in small portions because of this, but the only place we can buy it at any time is the big grocery store. That means walking to the bus stop, riding the bus, walking to the store, getting the milk, waiting for the bus, and taking it back. That’s about a one-hour errand, which is quite bothersome when your family’s at home waiting for breakfast. Not so practical. We found out last night we can also buy it at a local family market near us (kinda like a 7-11, but much smaller and much more hole-in-the-wall), but the trick is waking up early enough to buy some before they run out. Which happens every day. We’ll see if we can accomplish this feat.

Our other option is long-life milk, which quite frankly, really isn’t an option for us because it doesn’t actually taste like milk. It comes in carboard boxes and can sit on shelves for – you guessed it – a long time. But it’s so chock full of chemicals, I don’t want to think about what hormones Chickpea might be drinking (and I thought non-organic in the States was iffy…). We used to have a wonderful milk drinker, but those days are fading fast. Nine times out of 10 I’ll give her a glass of milk, she’ll take a sip and say, “Yuck.” And I usually can’t blame her. It’s all a crap-shoot, really.

posted: 07 May 8
under: