A Trip to the Post Office

Anna Einstein and Matt Lindeman are Peace Corps Volunteers in El Salvador. Their blog of their experiences in El Salvador has a wonderful description today of a recent time-consuming trip to the local post office. Here is an exceprt:

After a few minutes, one of the very kind post office employees asked what we needed, and we told her. First, she dove straight into prepping our package. Nobody in El Salvador actually packs their own packages before going to the post office…..it is Full Service. So, we hand her what we want to mail, and she gets to work. She carefully cuts down an old vitamin box to perfectly fit what we are mailing. It took about 3 tries to get it close to the right size. (Think: Cut the box. Fold the box. Shake the box. Repeat. Repeat Again. Repeat Again.) Then, she stuffed as little shredded newspaper as possible into the box to prevent it from moving around too much. After all, every newspaper shred is added weight. After that, the box is carefully and thoroughly taped up, wrapped in brown paper, and taped again. We then got to address the package. Then is was time to weigh the packages and dispense stamps.

Read the rest of the visit to the post office here.