The ShellyBeach

I’m working nights this week, but it kind of worked out well for once. Tuesday turned out to be the best postal day EVER, and I was able to Skype with Chiara Wednesday morning from work for my Aussie Care Package Opening Ceremony.

Chiara sent me a package! Trans-Pacific package-sending REQUIRES a lot of effort, as the package must be tracked, tracked again, and tracked some more, OCD-style, from the time the item is taken to a post office and then all the way until the recipient receives it. SO MUCH TRACKING to follow along with the customs progress, lodging/despatching, etc. Additionally, sending stuff to Australia from here or vice versa is retardedly expensive, but SO worth it when the other person finally gets the package and squeals as they pull stupid crap out of a box that came from the other side of the world.

Anyway, so this was the biggest excitement on Tuesday:

I had to wait 16 hours to open the package (because of the time zones and the Skype date). In the meantime, I pondered the identity of this animal:]

Also in the mail:

1) A Christmas Woot shirt (marking the 29302nd cat shirt that I bought from shirt.woot.com):

2) My Andola Dortch Lady Rocket jersey from the jersey auction last spring. The jerseys were supposed to be availale in October, but UT didn’t receive their new uniforms until a couple of weeks into the season. This makes my dad monumentally excited:

Anyway, so. Settle in for package photos.

When I sent Chiara her box of diabetes, I wrote her a rambling letter about stupid things, just because. She sent me 4 dollars in the mail once and didn’t include a note, and I cried for 3 days. (That’s not true, but don’t do that shit to me again, KIKI). Anyway, Chiara sent a letter, and here’s the cute part at the end (bonus #doublerube written hashtag):

Faithful readers will remember VEGEMITE DAY at my work last year. This friendship is pretty toast-centric:

Here’s a cool magnet that will tell you the temperature in Fahrenheit or Celcius…whatever your little heart desires:

I now own this CD of THUNDER DOWNUNDER. We have not listened to it, but it has been brought to our attention that “downunder” is one word, and ELECTROSTATIC RAGE is a cool track name:

Brian’s Australia Rules Football hat from Chiara’s favorite team:

This can of kangaroo startled me at first. If I hadn’t know it was illegal to send any food that isn’t junk (and if the can had been a little heavier), I might have thought it was canned kangaroo meat. Here’s the can before and during the opening:

Here’s the kangaroo post-emergence:

It is notable that the can says, “May cause indigestion” and “After opening, keep contents in reach of children.” YOU WACKY AUSTRALIANS. Americans are too dumb for cutesy jokes.

Harvey sent the cats (particularly Harvard) a present:

I put the suction cup part on the sliding glass door and cats played with the toy(!):

Two shirts:

Some of the following pictures are of many many of my presents at the same time, so I’ll just point out some of the stuff before each picture.

(I don’t really know what that Melbourne thing on the left really is – is it a towel or some kind of wall hanging or…?) Also: chocolate cane toad, lego head pencil sharpener, some pencils(!), a tiny cricket bat, some goofy silly bands (they are “twinsies” ones where the bracelets have a mate…eg, two halves of a heart…Chiara should have opened the package and took half of them), a fake mustache, Papaw ointment for your nappy rash, Anzac cookies (“biscuits”), cotton candy (“fairy floss”), Australian animal crossing stickers, paper lanterns.

This one picks up on the right side of the previous picture. A tiny plush koala on a “gum” leaf, Icestralia cube tray, my Australia cork hat (to keep flies off your face, duh):

BabyCat wearing the cork hat:

My #HeterosexualLifePartner necklace…so sweet:

Here are some Australia coasters with awesomely amazing photoshopping that yielded some frighteningly large penguins and other animals:

Chiara sent my Dad a book about Aussie slang because he enjoys Australian slang a great deal.

My dad came over in the evening…here’s a picture of him enjoying his book:

Chiara sent me some Australia plant seeds – we might either introduce some invasive species or learn a valuable lesson about trying to plant things that are supposed to live in arid or semi-arid climates.

Cats love Aussie items:

Chiara sent me several packages of these candies in an attempt to collect them all. I think we missed one or two…?

Here’s the chocolate cane toad I mentioned earlier…just hanging chillin’:

Minus the wrapper:

Having a friend who lives in Australia is kind of mind-blowing. Everything is so different there, plus we are SO FAR APART. We can iMessage on our iPads/iPhones without getting charged, so we can type back and forth all day if we’re so inclined in a real time chat…doesn’t that seem crazy??? It’s weird to think about how just a couple of years ago could not possibly have met, and even if we did, we would have had a relatively difficult time communicating the way we do. #sofortunate #HLP #thefutureisnow

ALSO: ECHIDNAS. WTF? I’ve never heard of these…except for that Brian says we saw them in person at the Cleveland Zoo.