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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

A postcard and a surprise

Incoming...
     Sort of a slow mail day today but I was excited to find this super cute card from Taiwan in my mailbox. (sent 63 days ago!) They look like little happy jelly rolls with fruit inside. I wonder if the inside is frosting or something like whipped cream. Is the cake flavored too or just colored?  Anyone from Taiwan want to answer? The chocolate one on the bottom left looks the tastiest. (Are those coffee beans in there?) Yum. I would feel guilty eating their little smiley faces. 
   On the back Tina wrote a nice message and had some very pretty stamps. ("Taiwan" looks complicated to write using characters.)  The card looks like it was from Crown Fancy. Check out the pictures of the desserts on their site.
     Here are the stamps she had on the card. We had a beetle just like that on our porch the other day. (Thought it was an Asian Longhorn Beetle at first. If you're not from the area, we have had trouble with those bugs eating the local trees.  I looked it up and realized that it was a different bug.) It was bigger than a lot of the local bugs... and ugly.



Other news:
    I was watching tv on my couch when I thought I saw the UPS truck pull up to the house. I never get packages that can't usually be stuffed into the mailbox so I was super excited. I hadn't ordered anything so what could it be? (Yes, I really do get this excited and have these conversations in my head. I think I need therapy.)  It turned out to be this:



     A few weeks ago I was online and came across a site called Redditgifts. It seemed kind of like a swapper site so I decided to check it out. The first thing I saw was the fact that they were having a Back to School gift exchange for teachers. Here's the really cool part. I thought "Wow, cool. I get to swap with another person who teaches." Well, I was wrong. It was a swap where teachers would receive a gift, not a swap. Surely this is too good to be true right? Anyone who teaches knows that teachers always "pick up a few things" for the classroom (students, curriculum, building repair, etc...) throughout the year. Redditgifts was asking for some people to donate $15 to buy supplies for a teacher. I thought "They are going to have so many teachers sign up and I doubt they will have enough people to donate" I was wrong. There were many, many people who signed up for the swap and all of them sounded very appreciative to be able to help. The teachers who signed up were asked to make Amazon wishlists and submit them.
     I received 2 packages of Expo dry-erase markers. This is super important to me because my room is very low tech (not by choice). The markers are constantly drying out or being used until they're empty. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a note person so Post-it notes are always a win with me. The last gift in the package was a CD of lullabies from around the world. (This is perfect for my 7th grade class which talks about music around the world!) There are songs from Benin, Madagascar, Canada, South Africa, Mexico, Australia, Brazil, Scotland, USA (It's a Jewish lullaby that I don't know), Japan, Argentina, Brazil and Tatarstan/Russia. One of the songs is a song that I'm actually performing with the 7th/8th grade chorus this semester.  IN ADDITION to this (which is crazy), she is also sending me these posters for my room:
     I am really grateful. This is such a nice way to start the school year. Reddit Gifts has totally won me over and I'm sure I'll be swapping there often! I can't wait to "pay it forward" the next time I see an opportunity.
     The man who sent me my package was a man named Kim. (I had assumed Kim was a woman until he wrote me today. Sorry!) I just got a really touching e-mail from him today. It reminded me that as teachers (of any kind- moms, educators, role models, Christians, etc) our words and actions are so important. Kim, I'm super humbled by your kindness and humility. Thank you so much!

Outgoing:

Gasp! I sent NO mail today. I'm going to write a few random letters tonight.  I realized I do have a letter to respond to as well. One of my penpals has been sick so I've been connecting with her a lot over Facebook. I realized that I hadn't replied to her letter yet so I'll do that tonight. 

1 comment:

  1. Nice to visit your interesting blog and I'm from Taiwan. Let me try to answer your questions.^^

    Tha AD cards of the snck shop are very cute. The cake roll you see are their famous products. Inside the rolls there is condense milk jelly. Every cake roll has different flavor. (Green=Matcha,the same meaning of green tea; white=Vanilla; black=chocolate or black sugar) Some has fruit chunk inside. They are probably yummy but I don't like any thing too sweet, so I think it is out of my imagination that I can stand.

    Hope you can understand my explanation:)

    PS: many people in Taiwan hate insect stamps!!! They are ugly...:(

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