The amazing Korean post office.

Recently I began sending all my packages to my school. It's a lot easier for the letter carriers to drop stuff off in the main office than go through all the rigmarole (10 points for using "rigmarole" in a sentence) of knocking on my door, discovering I'm not home, calling me, discovering I don't speak Korean, and finally leaving the package with my landlord. The last package I got at my house though was something special. There was nothing special about the contents of the package--just some jewelry I got as a Christmas present for my co-teacher at Gangdong Middle School, but the location of the package is what really got me.

I ordered the earrings in the beginning of December. They were shipped on December 18th. Therefore, I should have received them by the end of December. Turns out, I did. I called the guy who I got the earrings from (a foreigner living in Korea), he asked his Korean wife to call the post office to check on the shipment, and they told her that the letter carrier delivered the package on December 20th. Ok. They also told her that the letter carrier put the package in the TV amplifier box outside my apartment. Not in my mailbox (it would have fit). Not outside my door. Not with my landlord. In the metal box crammed with wires and a TV amplifier. And there it stayed. Somehow it never occurred to me to look there, even though I never got a note or anything to tell me that's where it was. Anyway, I get that email from the guy yesterday, and sure enough, that's where the box was. All's well that ends well, I suppose.