Knowing this, my wonderful grandparents (see previous awesome g'rents mention) decided to make me feel more at home. They sent me a box of presents, wrapping each individual item separately to make my present volume appear greater. As you can see, our coffee table is now overflowing with Christmas cheer!
But the customs grinch stole a large part of the excitement.
Apparently, Peruvian customs randomly selects a group of packages from abroad for inspection. In other words, they go through each one and make sure neither the content nor the recipient is suspicious.
Guess who's package was selected. Yep. I got a letter saying I needed to go down to the post office's special customs service with my passport and two copies between the hours of 8:30-10 am and 2-3 p.m.
This morning, I waited one hour. As if that wasn't grinchy enough, once I sat in front of the customs inspector, he asked me to open the box. He then proceeded to open every single Christmas present in front of me. I screamed for help!
"He's torturing me! He's ruining my Christmas!"
But my cries were only heard by other postal employees, and by their reactions, I wouldn't be surprised if "going postal" was also a problem in Peru.
Okay, I really didn't say that. But I did try to politely ask, "Excuse me, sir, will we be opening every single gift?"
He let off a little bit, and left me the biggest and nicest-wrapped present for me to open later.
I decided not to mention that if any of these gifts were drugs, that one probably would have been about the right size. I didn't want my only Christmas surprise left to be ruined, after all.
SerPost Peru, you stole my Christmas!
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Oh...still much better than a Peruvian claiming the customs stole the content inside, while in fact it is the Peruvian himself that is a thief.
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