The Shoes Arrive

I have stooped to buying American. Well, actually, they were made in China, so I guess that stopping in the US is ok. The shoes finally arrived at K's. She said, "They are en route. Some little goodies are packed in the boxes too. Your shoes are cute!" She sent them two weeks ago. I watched every day for them and finally they have arrived. I got a tiny slip in the mail that said I could go pick them up. It was crumpled and could easily have been mistaken for trash. It certainly does not look important.

Now I must go to Suceava tomorrow between the hours of 8 and noon to pick up the box or they would return it to sender. Apparently, Romanians are willing to drop everything at the drop of a hat to comply with these ridiculous requests. I teach until 11 and so decided that I could still make the 45 minute trip in the hitch-hike car and get down the street to the post office in time with Ross' help. He is a Peace Corps Volunteer whose room I have usurped. He hails from Seattle, but has been traveling through Europe since June. He will return to the States for Christmas and then he will "have to get a real job," as he puts it. In the meantime, it is nice for me that he is here and knows how things are done.

We meet at the official corner and head into Suceava. This time we manage a brand new Mercedes. It is a relatively quiet ride as I think the driver wants his new car to last for a while and so he doesn't take quite as many chances.

We get to town and jump in a bus that takes us to Central Station where we go a few more blocks to the post office for foreigners. I would never have found it myself and most Romanians have no reason to go here so I would have been wandering around lost if it had not been for Ross. We finally get to the building and it is under construction. It does not look like this is it, but there is no information on the door indicating where to go.

We are leaving when we take one last look. There is activity in an office way off to the side of all the construction. A closer look makes us think maybe it is the post office for foreigners. We go inside and start the red tape process. I hand the clerk the paper I received with yesterday's mail. He begins to fill out another form in triplicate. He scrutinizes my passport. What exactly he thinks I am going to have mailed to me is beyond my comprehension. Knowing that they open all packages, who in their right mind would send something that is not stated on the manifest. He then marches off through piles of rubble to the next office. There another gentleman has yet another form filled out. They put the package on the scale and weigh it. He points to the weight on the scale and the amount written on the form and indicates that I must sign it. I must sign a second form to indicate that I am indeed the addressee of the package. The bureaucracy is amazing.

Now the clerk begins opening the package. There are a few boxes inside the big box and he opens each of them. He is strewing the contents all over as he opens each smaller box. I am collecting it all and returning it to the big box. Finally, he is satisfied that it really does contain what it says it does and he sends us out of the office. Thank heavens Ross has come along because I am not too sure I would have made it back alone.

We head outside to regroup. We find a trash receptacle and begin to unpack the boxes. If I try to take this big box back, I will have to pay for an additional seat and that is too much. We open every piece of packing as K has deftly hidden prizes all through the packing material. It is a glorious day! Chocolate! Ribbons! More chocolate! A Pin the Tail of the Turkey game that will be great fun next week on Thanksgiving. I have four classes and so they will be having great fun. And, of course, the shoes. She has hidden all sorts of toys under the lids, in the tissue. I think the customs guy actually took the Lay's potato chip bag for packing material. Little did he know they wouldn't last the evening and they were great! And then there are the shoes!!! Shoes that fit! Pretty shoes. I would put them on now, but that would mean carrying my boots home, and they are much too bulky. I packed my bag and stuffed one of the smaller boxes with all the great stuff we found. I have to admit to eating one of the Milky Way bars right there on the spot. It was too tempting.

It took us two different trash bins to get rid of the cardboard and then we left the bigger pieces folded under one of them.

We wandered to the big grocery store and then headed back home. It was a lovely day – made all the better with the arrival of new shoes.

I a me a year, the computer for many area where m including a few pictures of the landscape on the return trip. The light was perfect on the snow and through the trees. The sheep were at the roadside in one of the meadows. They do not use fences to keep the animals in. There is no road kill at all so they must have smarter animals in Europe than we do in the States. Seldom are there even people with the animals when they are out grazing. The gates are opened at 7am and the sheep head for the mountain side to graze with their dog escorts. At 5pm they are all back at the gate, waiting to be let in. It seems that they need no one to tell them the time. You could set your watch to them if you wanted to. They know what they are supposed to do and do it well every day.