Errands

A lot of times, days that we choose to run errands can turn out to be either very disappointing, frustrating or both. Today, we had a successful errand day! We decided to drive downtown for several reasons- turn in my wedding ring to a jeweler to have a prong fixed, check the post office for a package that my mom sent about 5 months ago, and hit the tourism shopping street for various gifts. When we arrived at the jewelers store, which is right on a main government plaza, we realized that they had started celebrating "La Paz Day" a day early and there were loud, marching parades and crowds filling the streets. The jeweler was closed at 10:30, being the time that most stores open, so I asked next door and the older gentlemen told me the owner should arrive at any moment. So, we took those few moments to be patriotic and watch the parades. After about 10 minutes, the older man from the store next door waved us down and explained that he just received a phone call from the owner who was travelling and wouldn't be back until Monday. Bummer for us, but kudos to older dude who was nice enough to get our attention and keep us from waiting any longer. I love nice people. So, we headed down to the post office for our next errand. We rarely check this post office because we have updated our PO box to one much closer to where we live and thought that a runner from our SIM office would check it from time to time to make sure there wasn't anything in the box, since most of us have notified everyone of our change of address. Well, we found out that he hasn't been checking it, and those mysteriously missing packages my mom sent had been sitting in the office since March!! My sweet mom had picked up a bunch of danishes back when I was craving danishes and mailed them. Although the "best buy" date was mid-March, Scotty and I busted open a nice, sweet cinnamon one this afternoon and indulged in the blissful goodness that is gas station-style, rot-your-teeth sweet danish...yummy! The cool thing about this trip to the post office was the lady behind the counter. I must admit that the postal workers are not typically the most helpful or friendly crew around, but this lady went out of her way to go check and see if our packages were still there, even though on her list it had been marked that they were already in route to being returned to sender- having sat for so long. Again, I really appreciate nice people. And then the last stop was tourism street. Scotty and I love going here because there is always some kind of Bolivian handicraft that we love and know would make a great gift for someone. I won't go into all our finds, but I did have to post a picture of the most adorable, newborn size, periwinkle (the color of our nursery) Bolivian sweater and hat of all time. For $3, we couldn't resist it for our little one.