My last box arrived!!!

Ok, my 3rd and final box I had shipped from China came. I'm going to be brave and open it in "real time" right here. I'm dorky, excited, and sad all at once. It's the last bit of my life in China, finally arriving in the US. That's it. All done now. All 3 boxes were earlier than China Post quoted, though quite beaten up. Two of them had actual holes you could stick your hand in, like this one. Yes, the straps came like that. Pack WELL if you're shipping the cheap ground route overseas.`

Now I'll go open it and see what was so special that it was packed in the first box I packed and was worth 343rmb to send and weighed 13.48kg. (29.7lbs, $50) I hope it's nothing embarrassing or stupid, because I'm about to show it to the world.....


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I forgot it was a box within a box....















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YES! It was TOTALLY worth it! It was all books, no wonder it was so heavy. Good stuff, stuff I can't buy even in Chinatown. If I ordered just 3-4 of these books online (if I could find them and know if they're any good first) I'd pay that $50, and some of these are sentimental too... and some DVD's, some bracelets that will be gifts...



Boring part: naming everything in the picture. I won't be offended if you stop reading now, but I'm going to do it for the person who said "You can buy Chinese books in Chinatown." Sure, find me these books.


From top left, COUNTER-clockwise-ish:

Pamphlet from donating blood (the thing with the guy's arm sticking out; he's famous and those ads were all over subways, etc); bracelets strewn about; pamphlet about the Olympic Torch Route. I also have pictures of me with a real torch (behind glass) and some sketches of other possible torches, from working at Lenovo, who made it.

Dark blue book: How Languages Are Learned

Yellow: calligraphy practice book

small handmade notepad (green with fish)

handful of DVD's & CD's

Pinnochio (bilingual)

100 Topics for Business English, which I sometimes used in class but can also use for myself learning Chinese; it's evenly bilingual

Teahouse (middle) - the script of the play; it's really super famous and I saw it in NYC before I went to China (all chinese, no english, beyond me but a high quality thing to study in the future)

2 DVD's of old 1930's Chinese movies; beyond me now but good practice material for future; I think old movies like that are really interesting


dark blue book: dictionary of characters (yes, chinese characters can be arranged in dictionaries; it's not hard to look them up once you get the hang of it, but I'm still proud I can)

small black, white, & red thing: deck of playing cards with pictures of the Nine Gates of Beijing from the 1930's.

light blue: writing practice books (cute and cheap as heck; schoolchildren use them and you can buy them anywhere)

colorful book with pink flower bit: children's book describing flowers and plants. I also have one describing vegetables & fruits, and a few of a different publisher describing animals, household items, etc. VERY useful. For example, "ONION: Onions grow underground. They have many layers, and when you cut them they will make you cry." Good vocabulary in a simple way.


stack: YiJing (I-Ching) on top, another philosophy under that (both above my level but fun to tackle a small paragraph of when I want a huge challenge, and awesome for the future: and thank you Raymond for them; if I could only choose one book I got in China to take home it would be the YiJing) ...

Under those are 4 elementary/middle school level science books. They have a variety of topics, 1-2 pages on each, with Pinyin. It will be an extremely useful tool for studying; TONS of vocabulary, and the topics are so compact and neat. Chock full of info but bite sized. Picture follows....

middle: Spitting On Ghosts: A collection (bilingual) of old fables with morals and stuff. It's not great but it has pictures, like a cartoon book but not very funny.

In the box is misc... Garfield comic book, small kid's books of poems or fairy tales, notebooks, etc.















Ok, I *really* have to go ... now what shall I read to bed?....


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