Packages!

My birthday was over a month ago, but with all the power outs, flooded roads, and finicky cell phone reseau it's been hard to get online lately, so I haven't had a chance to gush about all the great mail I got last month.

I got an amazing package from Switzerland!

The girls I used to nanny for made me some beautiful drawings and a really wonderful calendar -- it was a lovely gift, and it's going to be great to have all these photos up in my hut:

I got some pretty sweet cards and letters. 

My American family sent me this fantastic package...

... and this lovely new sunhat!

I was particularly excited about the hat, the fruit leathers, and the gel pen that was filled with glue. A glue pen! So good! It works really well, too.

This package from Troll wasn't technically birthday related,
but it was really, really awesome. 

Rabies and Rainbows

The day we left for our most recent trip to the villages was hot and fairly miserable. I'd gotten my obligatory rabies and hepatitis vaccinations, which left my arm feeling like hot lead and my stomach gurgling. Between trying to do laundry in buckets, adjusting to the malaria medication, sitting through technical trainings (on gardening, security, and common illnesses, etc) and the heat and the dust and the nausea, I was not exactly in a fantastic mood.

And then a package arrived from Switzerland, and it was filled with rainbows and flowers and adorableness (aka beautiful hand-painted stationary from the girls I used to nanny for in Lausanne) and suddenly everything seemed a lot less unpleasant.

It's always lovely to get mail, but this was definitely the sweetest thing I've received so far.