Do you have my care package? Please?

I got a care package the other day and it was truly one of the great moments in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about something.
I had anxiously been awaiting it for some time- there was a kid in one of my classes, Khaled Ali, who showed up one day wearing a NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS SUPERBOWL HAT. I was all, get the hell out of my room right now mister, you’re in the heart of EAGLES TERRITORY! He just had no idea what I was talking about, didn’t know where New England was, and had never heard of a patriot, but I knew. And it was killing me. I decided to have my mother send me my favorite Philly Eagles cap so I could rub it in his face and demonstrate my superior American football and Philadelphia Eagles knowledge ( I have washed Donovan McNabbs sweaty jock strap.) and hopefully publicly shaming him in the process. So I kept anxiously asking Sahar and Gehan and Nuhad and anyone at all who works in the office of Amideast but clearly is far too important to concern themselves with anything so trivial as getting the mail, if my care package had come yet. Nuhad is the accountant but for some reason I have chosen her as my go-to gal for all manner of questions I have. She has proven extremely helpful: ascertaining for me why all the chairs from our apartment went missing one day (they were taken away to get reupholstered), where to get extra whiteboard markers (ask one of the reception interns to open the supplies cupboard and get one for you), what do men do with their qat wad when it’s time for the call to prayer (they spit it out in a cup and then eat it again after prayers) and such.
I explained to them my insufferable situation (Khaled Ali’s hat openly taunting me in class) and what my eagerly anticipated care package would contain. Clearly this was a predicament. They taught me a few crucial phrases in Arabic so I could successfully go to the Post Office in Khormaksar, inquire about my package and ascertain its delivery status. I went every few days and it was chaos. Much like the banks, the government, the police…. It’s clear that nothing is coordinated here, nothing is synchronized and standardized. No wonder the “ how-long-will-this-letter-from-washington-to yemen” trial run took two months to get to me.
They just let me come into the back holding area where I pawed through boxes looking for something that originated in America. There weren’t any records except for a GIANT (seriously, it took up an entire table, the fella needed two hands to turn a page), ratty, hand-written old book that had illegible shorthand notations covering its pages. We took a nice twenty-minute interlude looking through the pages of that hefty tome in case they mysteriously held the key to where my care package was.
Every time I walked past the office Sahar and Nuhad asked me if I got my package yet, I would shake my head dolefully, we would commiserate silently for a moment and then optimistically they’d say, “no problem, insha’allah you will get it tomorrow!”
Finally I came to the Post Office one day and they triumphantly held up a slip of paper and told me to go the Post Office in Crater center. This too was a hand-written paper and it had in Arabic the word “Amika” on it. Bah… do they mean “America?” The piece of paper also had the name of a woman written on it. It was not my name, nor was it a name I had ever heard previously. Clearly this was worth investigating. Along the way I picked up Ben and we went to the Crater Post Office. I handed a man the paper and he went and rummaged in the back for awhile, grumbling and literally scratching his head in consternation. Eventually he came back to the window with two packages! One for the mystery lady and one for me! I had no id on me but I told him my name is Taryn, the label on that package says “Taryn” (he had to take my word on that one because he didn’t speak English) and that also I would like to take that other package as well. Ben had his Oregon driver’s license which he showed the man thus successfully proving that he's an oregon citizen... and the man unquestioningly gave us the packages. I popped my head into the office and held up the battered box for the ladies to see, we jumped up and down in excitement it and clapped our hands for joy. It was completely silly.

Package Contents:
- One French Press Coffee Maker! Alhamduliallah!
- Both Seattle’s Best AND Starbucks coffee
- Some gummy bears- really though? How often do you eat gummy bears? But let me tell you I enjoyed the hell out of those gummy bears
- A gooey completely melted sac of chocolate that really looked like a gooey sac of.. well…it was gross looking.
- MY EAGLES HAT! And other miscellaneous but equally delightful items.
The best thing was a little packet of pictures my mother had enclosed. This was clearly from an old disposable camera that I had left lying around. It had some pics of my parents and I camping along Washington’s astoundingly beautiful rivers, the kittens, my beautiful home and my parents posing with the kittens, and a couple of pics from my trip to DC with the girls right before I moved to Yemen. It was so very nice, it made me a little weepy.

So yeah! Finally got my care package – I got it at 1:15 on the very last day of my classes. Alas my classes, and my acquaintanceship with Khaled Ali, ended at 12:30. Foiled again! Damn you Tom Brady, damn you.