Kaz Post - honest or dishonest?

Well, it is now December 30 and there is no sign of any of our parcels from the UK. Granny has posted 11 separate items, all individually numbered so that we can check if everything has arrived. Quite apart from the pure expense of 11 parcels' worth of presents going missing, I am gutted that she has spent hours and hours of time, miles and miles of selotape and countless trips to the post office to send these things and NOT ONE has arrived. I am hopeful that they have just been delayed in the UK post (strike backlogs still perhaps?) and then arrived into Kazakh end-of-year, can't-be-arsed-to-do-my-job-properly-pass-the-vodka-dimitry apathy which is quite likely. But there is the overriding worry that some undeserving Kazakh postal or customs officer has stolen our things.

We are still hoping, and I think I will continue to hope until the kids go back to school on January 11th, then I will give up.

We have, so far, been one of the lucky families whose post has arrived - many people that we know here have had huge problems with their post. Our local Post Office clearly have a sorting box marked "random foreign people living nearby" as some items which have been addressed to our house have been delivered to my husband's office.

Last year, we were on holiday for Christmas, so the fact that all our presents didn't arrive until January didn't really matter. Everyone posted their things much earlier this year, so we were fully expecting things to arrive by the 25th. It was only because other Grannie brought a large suitcase of gifts with her when she came to visit in November that the kids had anything to open at all on Christmas Day this year - phewy.

Of course, if everything does not show up, then that will be the end of any gifts from anyone in the UK, forever - boo hoo.

No one will use a courier (I researched couriering our gifts for Christmas from John Lewis on Oxford Street, and for £135 of presents it was going to cost £185 to send! I could not bring myself to spend that money on shipping a load of plastic Sylvanian Families half way around the world.) - the only solution will be for husband to find a European conference in the third quarter of the year which he absolutely must attend, and fly business class via London where he can pick up things and bring them back. However, he has been very reluctant to offer his services as a courier, after I overstepped the mark once and ordered a flat-packed desk to be delivered to his hotel in London and made him carry it back to Korea! ha ha ha

Keep your fingers crossed for us...