Wednesday, September 10, 2008

video for the day

The kids are all at school today and I think Celeste and I are enjoying a morning of no fighting, no spilt juice or screaming at the tops of lungs.. It is very hot now, and I don't think it's going to cool down until after we leave... IT hasn't rained in literally 4-5 months.

I had a classic day of Botswana life yesterday.... I laughed and cursed all day long..

I am trying to find out about shipping some large boxes back home and begin preparing all of our belongings for the shipping.. There seems to be a restriction on how much something weighs in order to send it through BOtswana Post http://www.botspost.co.bw/ but no one knew if there was a size limit.. I spent 5 hours driving around the city(got a nice tan on my right arm) and visited 2 freight carriers 4 post offices and DHL...

I was told from the 4 post offices that .... It was impossible, that the fragile material I was trying to send could only be sent(because of it size) in a bag and not in a box...that I needed to check with "sorting" and I should try and repack it...
I was finally sent to the headquarters of Botswana post, told to go around to the back alley, I met a man who I could have kissed... It was like being back home..
He greeted me, asked me what I needed... I told him I had an oversized package that I though was under the restricted weight limit(20 kgs) and asked him if he could help me... He went out to the truck, looked at it, weighed it and said he didn't understand why they didn't accept it at the 3 other post offices..
Good service is hard to come by here and it was a breath of fresh air, especially after the morning I had...
One woman was angry with me because I was preparing to leaved the country.. "Why do you want to leave Botswana?"
What fun.... The packages will take about 2-3 months to get back, but I'd rather to that than pay some of the prices I was quoted from the freight companies/DHL.

The day ended with some success, but it took me literally all day...

Today I am posting a video of the twins watching synchronized diving during the Olympics.... They really enjoyed it, as you'll see. One note... The olympics covergae here was awesome.. No stories, no commercials, no special interests.. We had 3 stations and were able to watch every sporting event possible, with an hour long recap show(no commercials) at the end of the day... No Bob Costas, which was a nice change...

Here's the video...