*Letters, Sentences, Stamps: MAIL!*

I’m having an awful day. I didn’t understand any of my classes, I’m not getting along with my host family, and my school shoes give me blisters. The worst part is the day’s only half over. Mama picks my brother and me up from school and we go home to eat lunch. I put on my plastic flip-flops then go join the family at the table. There’s no salad. This sucks. I say ‘’provecho’’ as soon as I’ve forced down half a plate of rice and chicken, and stand up. Then I see it. There on the counter is a large white envelope. It’s completely beaten up along the edges and has post office stamps dating back to weeks before. It’s addressed to me. Suddenly my terrible day is awesome, musical worthy. I sing and dance a little as I tear open the top of the envelope and find home.
This isn’t based on one specific memory. I’m not lonely or sad, and today was pretty fantastic. There is one thing that will always be able to brighten a day in Bolivia however, no matter how perfect it may already be. It’s the mail. A letter from home guarantees a half hour of pure joy every time I read it. Care packages have been the reason for several exchange student get-together. ‘’Here, eat a Milky Way!’’ ‘’Look what this lady from church sent me!’’ ‘’Hey, I got pirate tattoos. Want one?’’ The first time I received reading material (Thank you!) I holed myself up in my room and read half the book, wrote in my journal about it, then finished it. There is really nothing like getting a tangible reminder that people love and remember you, especially considering the distance that reminder travels.
I have in front of me a Christmas card I received this year. The envelope is smudged and the edges are slightly dented and bent. I don’t know when it left Alaska, but it was stamped in Seattle, Washington on the twentieth of December, 2008. For the next nineteen days my brave little Christmas card traveled the world. I have no idea where it went, or why it decided to take a two and a half week vacation. I did not give it permission to travel farther than Bolivia! Wherever it may have gone, it arrived in my country on the eighth of January, 2009. Four days later it moseyed on over to Santa Cruz and I got a very merry Christmas wish on the twelfth of January, only twenty-three days after my little card passed through Seattle. What took it so long? Did it see the Egyptian pyramids? Did it try surfing in Australia (with a dry suit of course)? Really, what path did it take?
Earlier in 2008 I received a different card. I can’t tell you when it left Alaska or the United States, but I do have questions about its broken curfew. If I were in Santa Cruz for three days without coming or calling home, I would be sent back to Alaska faster than a Bolivian could eat a salteña. Lucky for it, I would never send mail back, even though it was stamped upon arrival in Santa Cruz on November seventh, then stamped again in Santa Cruz on November tenth. It took less time for it to travel from La Paz to Santa Cruz than it did for it to hang out in Santa Cruz, maybe drinking some mate.
Despite my griping over the time it takes for me to finally get it, I really love mail. I love getting it, opening it, reading it, tasting it (a particularly memorable bag of smoke salmon) and composing mental replies. On occasion I even write back. True, mail is slow, expensive, and unreliable. In the modern world, there isn’t much time or space to sit down and put thoughts on paper and send them to someone else. I love emails, I love text messages, and I really love Facebook, but I love letters too. There’s something practically therapeutic about putting down worries and joys onto paper, sending them far away, then being reminded of them weeks later. It’s also fun spreading a conversation over the course of months. It doesn’t make much sense, but its fun all the same. If life doesn’t catch up to me when I go home, I may even continue writing letters. They’re a reminder of a simpler time, and they can make a day go from awful, to awesome in an instant.

And thank you Pam. I featured two of your cards in this piece. :)