Shopping

It's hard to find some stuff here that, to an American, is pretty basic--stuff like index cards and rubber bands. (thanks to everyone who has sent/brought me these necessities from the US or Germany!) They're not sold in office supply stores. Where do you find them? It's a mystery.

Yesterday I spent three hours tracking down envelopes for Christmas cards (which are sold without them). The only reliable place to find envelopes is the post office, where there are ten windows. Five had visible clerks. There were about twenty workers behind the scenes. Two windows had lines. One window had a bunch of people brandishing passports. The other line had people filling out endless forms. These people were not just buying envelopes.

One window (without a line) had a rack of envelopes behind the clerk. I approached her, pointed to the envelopes, and said "Mozhna?" (translated as "will you help me? I need help. hey!")

The clerk waved me away. I went back to the line with people who were filling out forms. After about twenty minutes, that clerk finished her task, waved me over, and was wonderfully helpful, asked me which envelopes I wanted, did I want a mixture, bolshoi (big) malinky (little), ran back and forth showing me the envelopes.

I like the post office, it's not that different from my local P.O. in Arlington.