the package

Back in my college days my best buddy Mary Kate would always get these elaborate packages from a family she knew at her home in Chicago land. These packages were incredible....so many types of cookies, cakes, candies, and even fun little treasures like candles and holiday decorations. For every big holiday Mary Kate got one of these HUGE boxes and we'd eat out of it for at least a month. "The Package" usually contained a ton of food so Mary Kate always loved to share "the package" with her friends (this was especially wonderful when I lived with Mary Kate because it felt like I got a package too, even though it wasn't mine. Tom would even enjoy "the package" treats and then he would organize the contents of the box into neat piles and sections, which is very Tom like and very un-Mary Kate like.)

Well, my friends, the day has come...Tom and I received our own package from the states! "The package" is wonderful and delightful and everything I could have wanted from home (what can I say, Jerre and Mike know how to make a great package). You can see above the package being received by us at school in all of its glory...Jerre's homemade cookies, Kaldi's coffee, a coffee grinder, magazines, candy, spices....and so much more. Simply Beautiful.

The only bad part about "the package" was getting it here. My parents had asked if they could send us anything and we quickly rattled off a wish list. They sent everything without too many problems and we were able to track it over the internet. It only took 3 or 4 days for it to arrive in Incheon, South Korea (the airport), but for some reason we noticed it wouldn't leave the airport. We quickly discovered our package got held up in customs! It was a long ordeal (4 days to be exact) but basically because we had some expensive items in the box they wanted to tax all of our goods. They also wanted copies of our passport and our alien resident card, which we won't get for a couple more weeks. (At one point we even thought we'd have to wait to get the package until after we got our alien cards. could you imagine Jerre's cookies just sitting in a box in korea for weeks???!!!) Long story short, our awesome Korean staff figured everything out for us and got them to not tax us and not wait for our alien cards. It was a pretty ridiculous process honestly. But, friends, "the package" was worth the wait.