Home For the Holidays

Free shots and Karaoke: someone’s happy to be home!

Hello again, readers! Yes, it’s been a long time, but we figured we’d update you on how things are going since we got back home to the USA. Here are the big things I’m sure you’ll want to know about:

• So far, we have no jobs, though we’ve taken a lot of meetings, had a few informal interviews, and there’s some potential freelance work out there for us. Just nothing permanent yet…(anyone hiring??)…

• We bought a car! This sleek 2011 Subaru Outback has been shuttling us across the Northeast USA for the past several weeks.

• And regarding housing, we just signed a short-term lease on a rental house in Kennebunk, Maine, starting in January. Yep – looks like we’ll be settling in Maine and seeing how it treats us. I’m already researching lobster pots.

We’re spending the holidays with our family and friends, and while our journey was simply amazing, it’s been great to be back home and settling in a bit. We’re currently in Philadelphia, visiting Amy’s family for Christmas, and generally getting re-acclimated to American life – like cheesesteaks, cheesesteak hoagies, football, dentistry, clothes dryers, daytime television, 1-877-Kars4Kids, erections lasting more than four hours, and Two-for-Tuesday classic-rock rock-blocks of Bob Seger, Rush, and Pat Benatar.

Before our time in Philadelphia, we saw my family for Thanksgiving in Upstate New York. We stayed with my sister, and as many of you know, her house served as our home address while we were out of the country. It also served as the General Post Office for all things sent from overseas. My poor sister. Every month or so, she’d get an email from us: “Be on the lookout for a box shipped from X.” And sure enough, weeks later, she’d come home from work and find a box sitting on her front step.

We counted, and we realized we sent 14 packages home in the mail. One from Japan, two from Taiwan, two from Thailand, one from Singapore, one from New Zealand, two from India, one from South Africa, one from Austria, two from Germany, and one from Scotland. We probably spent over a grand sending all that stuff home. We also had three bags of stuff carried home by visiting friends and family, and we brought home a big bag of souvenirs as well. That’s just about 18 packages sent home in 14 months. That’s a lot of crap.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, this is a photo of all the packages stored on a set of shelves in my sister’s basement (well, the snowboards on the top shelf aren’t ours). She sent this photo to us before we got home, so there was still some stuff outstanding. Look at all that stuff. That really is a lot of crap.

Amy and I finally had the chance to open these packages and start sorting through everything. We dug through all the boxes and newspaper stuffing, opened all the wrapping, and started to rediscover all the things we’d collected during our trip. I barely remembered some of the stuff, and it was great fun to see all the things we’d forgotten about, and all the little mementos that reminded us of places that now seem only a distant memory.

Here’s some highlights for you, with photos and descriptions:

BEER GLASSES OF THE WORLD – everywhere we went, we collected beer glasses. We’ve got a bunch from all over Asia and Europe, plus some from South America, but that said, we’ve also got…

BROKEN BEER GLASSES – not a highlight at all, but the point is that of all those glasses shipped home, we only lost two. Though the one on the right, Hacker-Pschorr, was the beer tent we attended at Oktoberfest. Sad.

BEER MATS – I didn’t count, but there are hundreds. Hundreds of beer mats collected from around the world, and it’s kind of a neat collection…if you like beer mats. I have no idea what we’ll do with them. Put our beer glasses on them, I guess. Or use some of them to light the fireplace in Maine.

PORCELAIN BUST OF CHAIRMAN MAO – Look who made it home safely from China! In all of his glory, the Great Leader, unscathed…wait, what? What’s that you ask? Who is that blue fellow next to him?

It’s CAPTAIN SAVINGS! He’s the mascot of the Melt Me chocolate and ice cream shop in the Siam Center Mall in Bangkok, Thailand. And when I saw this piggy-bank version of the man, I knew I had to have him. Amy, on the other hand, questioned my sanity, and likes Captain Savings about as much as she likes getting a mammogram – she finds it unpleasant and awkward, but she puts up with it. Though she does enjoy him throwing a “Westside” gang sign. Just wait until Captain Savings is full of pennies – then how irritating will he be? (Very.)

“Hey wait!!…I can’t see anything, it’s all pixellated…” No, you can’t, because these are all the CHIRSTMAS GIFTS we bought for our relatives. So, no, you can’t see a thing…not until Christmas…

TUNNOCK’S TEA CAKES – these delicious little Scottish confections made it home mostly unscathed to be eaten as a Thanksgiving dessert. They were then demolished by my family in less than five minutes, in an act of blissful gluttony I now refer to as #TUNNOCKING.

…And while we’re on the subject of food… “THE LEANING TOWER OF FOIE GRAS” – we bought this big tower of discount foie gras in Paris at a food and wine festival by Sacre Coeur. That’s 58.30 euro of top-quality foie gras for the low, low price of just 50 euro. I repeat: 58.30 worth of high-grade French cat food for just 50 euro. That’s nearly 15 percent savings… Savings we’ll need for the antibiotics.

AN EMPTY BOTTLE OF NORTH KOREAN WINE – the wine was dreadful, cloudy, and left a bad taste in your mouth – just like Kim Jung Un! *Rimshot!* Am I right, people?… But yeah, I kept the bottle, because, well…who goes to North Korea anyway?… (PS – that joke might get me killed. Nice knowing you.)

VARIOUS FORMS OF GLOBAL CURRENCY – pretty cool stuff, I like to think, with all the various colors and denominations, and history. It’s pretty neat. But the best bill I found in the world was next…

THE FILTHIEST DOLLAR BILL IN THE HISTORY OF EVER – look at this thing!! I got this as change in Zimbabwe, where they actually use the US dollar as currency because their own currency is basically worthless (take a look at the ten billion dollar bill in the lower left hand corner of the currency photo above). It’s as weak as tissue paper. Compare to the somewhat new-ish dollar. I can’t imagine what that dollar has been through. I dare you to put this dollar bill in your mouth…

ADMISSION TICKETS – so, okay, here’s where we start getting into all the papers and such that we sent back. These are tickets to just some of the sights we saw around the world, including…

WRISTBANDS FROM VARIOUS EVENTS – “Hey, that’s a lot of boozing there, John…” Yeah, well, if you think all we did all over the world was drink, please notice the Opera Performance, thank you very much… (we got a beer beforehand).

VARIOUS TRAVEL EPHEMERA – tickets, tickets, tickets. Airplane tickets, train tickets, ferry tickets, funicular tickets, parking tickets, bus tickets, and, if you look very closely, bottom row, second from left: that’s for a pay toilet.

RECEIPTS – Why? I mean, what the hell was I thinking? Did I really need to know that a beer at the Lotte hotel in Seoul is 14000 Korean Won? I do like the blue “controle de cerveza” in the middle though – basically your running tab at the bar. I have no idea why, but I kept a bunch of receipts from various places. And all those receipts probably cost about $15 to ship. I couldn’t tell you for certain, though, because I don’t have any receipts for the postage.

Speaking of wasted postage/shipping costs, we discovered some other interesting items in the boxes. To wit:

AMY’S COLLECTION OF BARF BAGS. Does this need any explanation? No. Because someday, after we eat all that discount foie gras, I’m gonna need a few of these, and then we’ll all say, “Welp, I guess those came in handy!!”

BEER CAPS – this is a collection of international beer caps of global brands large and small, shipped at high cost from points all over the world, and put into a mixing bowl, sitting on a ping pong table, in a basement in Upstate New York.

CHANGE – This is various change, from various countries, which weighs about three pounds, and if you put it all in a sock, you could knock Kim Jung Un out cold with it. (I just want a simple funeral, really.)

A STICKER OF A TAKOTAMAGO – because someone needs this, desperately, for Christmas.

FYI, this is a takotamago, a little octopus with a hard-boiled quail egg shoved in its head:

Anyway….

A BUNCH OF SEASHELLS – Because America doesn’t have an ocean. On either coast.

Hey Hey Hey!! It’s A ROCK! No way! Why didn’t you mail ME a rock, dude?!

Hold the phone! Is that A BIGGER ROCK?! No more calls, please. We have a winner. “Best Useless Item Ever Mailed, 2014.”

Oh, forget it. It’s a WHOLE PILE OF ROCKS!! Estimated street value: free.

DRIFTWOOD – Because when you’ve got that many rocks and seashells, you better get a piece of driftwood and make some kind of diorama. Preferably with a paper seagull made from an old beer mat.

A WRAPPER FROM A MEAT PIE IN NEW ZEALAND – I must have really loved that meat pie. Apparently I loved it so much that I found it necessary to mail myself a reminder. Of my lunch. Eaten in a rental car. From ten months ago.

Though it is an award-winning meat pie. Back to the shipment…

A FOOT MASSAGE NOTE – Someone (not me) must have gotten a foot massage, and they (not me) must have gotten it on Tong Hua Street, and this person (not me) needed it translated. And it must have been one hell of a foot massage, because this paperwork survived to live another day.

MAP TO SOMEWHERE – It could be a map to Tong Hua Street and its various foot massage parlors. But I’ll never know, because I can’t read it. Which is why it’s apparently priceless and needed to be saved for posterity. This goes in my museum.

There’s also a lot of great things, honestly, like books from Japan, textiles from Asia, a beautiful brass Buddha from Laos, and a wealth of unique trinkets and t-shirts from all over the place. We’re really excited to find a permanent home in Maine, and then open the boxes for good and remind ourselves of an unforgettable fourteen months. In the meantime, it’s good to be home visiting with our friends and family.

Happy Holidays to everyone out there. Enjoy your friends and family as well, and best wishes for the coming year. We’ll see you with another update in the New Year, but meanwhile enjoy this hokey holiday photo we took at the mall. It’s a lot of crap.

“I want a new house, a new job, but mostly a new shirt…”