Since nothing new and exciting has happened to me lately, I’m going to take a moment to tell you all a story that happened to me a few months ago, but never wrote about. I hope you like it.

This year I geared up to spend my first Christmas away from home and without my family down here with me. Seeing as Christmas lasts for about a month in our house and I start blasting Christmas music and making cookies the day after Thanksgiving, I was anticipating a pretty melancholy season free of snow, nondenominational holiday tunes, and, most importantly, sweets.

My mom, too, was feeling a tad glum without her merry-making partner-in-crime and took it upon herself to mail me a special Christmas package to open on the day. Having previous experience with El Salvador’s less than efficient mail system, she sent it at the end of November to leave a large margin of error. Imagine our surprise, therefore, when there was nary a hint of a care package when I swung by my local correo on December 21^st. How could this be? I was not to let this ruin my Very Salvadoran Christmas, and managed to have a lovely holiday season, dressing as an angel in my community’s nativity play, making Christmas cookies in an adobe oven, and drinking my first spiked eggnog with my fellow PCVs in the “chilly” Perquin (at least there are pine trees).

The 26^th I was off to Nicaragua and my wayward Christmas package didn’t cross my mind again until I was back in El Salvador in January, suffering from the “back in site blues” and looking for a little whiff of America to get me through the slump. This time when I went to the post office they had news for me – no package, but a slip of paper telling me that my package was at the Salvadoran/Honduran border detained by customs as it had been “randomly” selected to be opened & the contents taxed.

This is one of those situations in which a language barrier, be it miniscule, is a huge detriment, and so I, thoroughly confused by what the postal worker was telling me and convinced he was holding my package hostage and pilfering my goodies in the back room, dispatched our PC Gotera office manager to the post office to work his Salvadoran magic and somehow get me my present. He, too, was unsuccessful and the end result was the two of us embarking on a journey from Gotera two hours due East to the border to retrieve my package. Mind you, by the time we finally got around to this road trip it was mid February, exactly 3 days before my parents were due down in El Salvador for vacation (imagine the irony – my mother arriving before the package she had sent off 3 months ago).

Carlos and I arrive at the customs office ready to do battle. First things first, I must show not only my passport, but also turn in a copy of it. I have no copy. The customs office WILL NOT make me a copy, despite their very evident copier in the background. Off we go to a nearby cyber café to make photocopies!

Back to the customs office. But, the package says “PCV Elsa Augustine” and my passport just says “Elsa Augustine”…clearly I am not PCV Elsa, I’m plain old Elsa, and therefore am committing identity fraud and cannot have this package intended for the other Elsa Augustine residing in El Salvador. No no, the head customs agent steps in, tells his minion to stop being ridiculous, and my package is produced.

I try to make off with my intact (miraculously so) parcel, but am quickly detained. The package must be opened and the contents inspected. We open the package and out springs an adorable, fuzzy Christmas stocking. I reach into this enticing piece of oversize footwear, previous experience with my mother’s stocking-stuffing skills telling me that I will not be disappointed, and pull out an abundance of Christmas presents, each individually wrapped. “Look,” I tell him. “It’s my Christmas presents from my family. May I go?” Of course not. We must open every little package so that I can be taxed on each item that I am retrieving. Do I get to open these presents? Oh no. This is the job for Super Custom Agent! But I will not be denied the unique pleasure of ripping through tissue paper and revealing my treasures, and so Super Custom Agent and I face off on opposite sides of the mail counter racing against one another to tear open all of my presents (any movie that depicts small children under the tree on Christmas morning will give you an accurate picture of what this looked like), while ever-cool Carlos sits in the corner, observing us and chuckling to himself.

Praise the lord my family loves me and nothing embarrassing or too weird was revealed in the unwrapping, and after conducting some obscure calculations it was determined that I would be taxed a whopping $4.60 for my goodies. I gladly whipped out a five-dollar bill to be informed that I could only pay this debt at a bank that was located across town and closed at 5:00PM. It was 4:45. Carlos and I hoofed it across the city; dripping with sweat by now (did I mention we were on the coast? Yeah, it’s hot there). I finally make it to the clerk, clammy bills and papers clutched in my sweaty paws. As I hand over my passport, my receipt, and my money, the kindly clerk asks for my NIT (a random Salvadoran document we were given upon arriving to country and which I have not laid eyes upon since). My eyes glaze over and may or may not fill with tears as I see my lip-gloss, dove chocolates, and candy canes slipping into Custom Agent’s pockets in my mind’s eye, and I start trying to strike a bargain with the clerk. Luckily, Don Carlos comes to my rescue once again and produces his NIT, which he carries around in his wallet like any responsible adult. Ms. Clerk accepts a stand-in NIT although my name is clearly not Carlos, and I finally pay my debt and am able to race back to the agency and this time demand what is rightly mine!!

Carlos and I made the trip back to Gotera in relative silence – me gloating over my goodies and relaxing in a sense of smugness over a job well done, Carlos more likely than not marveling at the nut jobs that Peace Corps selects to send down to his beloved country.