Periodically, things happen to remind us that we are in a foreign place. This week there were a few of those...
The first one was pretty innocuous. I bought some Rice Krispie cereal for a recipe, and when I got it home, I realized it had a different name!
I always wonder about the renaming of things like that. How does rice bubbles make any more sense than Rice Krispie, I wonder? There must be a reason, and I would love to know.
A funny one happened when we went to our anniversary dinner on Tuesday. I went to the restroom and these signs were plastered all over in the bathroom:
I don't want to think too hard about what necessitated those signs being made!
And finally, one thing we've learned is that it can be really hard to get packages here. We have a small mail slot in the front of our building, but delivery people won't leave bigger packages unless there happens to be someone walking into our building at the exact time they are delivering so they can then leave it in the lobby. Usually we just get a package notice, which we can pick up at the little post office in Kirriblli between 8:30 and 5, Monday through Friday. Which also happens to be the hours that the average person is at work. So it gets really difficult to get packages delivered to us, and I've started just having things delivered to my office.
The alternative to rushing home early from work or carting home a package on the train is to use a parcel pickup service. We've recently learned how these work: there are certain convenience stores/markets that are dedicated parcel pickup areas. When you order a package, you can have the delivery person leave it at one of these stores and then you can pick it up later - usually to later hours like 8 or 9. What we didn't realize is that senders can choose that packages be left at these stores. So this week, we got a package notice and it said we had to go to a store that was about 15 minutes away. We'd never walked to that area before, and when we got there, I saw why. Toby called it "Assault Station."
Inside wasn't much better. It was run by two older Chinese people (maybe a man and daughter) who didn't speak much English. The store was a wreck: you could rent one of the DVDs from their personal collection (just in the normal DVD case) for $3 a night. You could also buy things from dusty shelves, like an egg, a melon, a serving platter, a chicken figurine - pretty much any random thing you could think of. The man went into a little side closet, which seemed like a food storage/laundry room/package room, to collect my parcel.
The store was so bizarre, so dirty, and so unexpected, that when we walked back outside with the package, we just looked at each other and asked "what just happened?!" Needless to say, it gave us a good laugh. And I won't be too sad if we have to take another adventure out to get a package there again!
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