Parcel Post
I’ve been keeping the Ethiopian postal service busy – 3 parcels have arrived in 2 days. Firstly Chris Pegler very kindly sent me a copy of her and Allison Littlejohn’s book, ‘Preparing for blended elearning’ – probably should’ve arranged to have my blended learning workshop after I’ve had time to read it!
I’ve received five 8Gb DVDs, from Jenny and Richard on the OpenLearn team, containing all the current OpenLearn course content – so I’m very grateful to them for this! I’m hoping that I’ll be able promote our Moodle server by offering access to some of the OpenLearn courses and it’ll encourage staff and students to visit the site.
Finally a parcel from my parents arrived, containing a random selection of items (all of which I’d asked them to send)… new (decent) toothbrush, wooden fish slice (we can only find metal ones here which would wreck our non-stick pan), more cds/dvds (software, radio shows etc) and a bar of dark chocolate 
I had to collect two of these parcels from the main post office in town. Well, I say in town, it’s actually stuck in some residential suburb, so a slightly odd location. Luckily I hadn’t left it too long to collect these as there’s a 1 birr per day per parcel ‘storage charge’ even for small parcels and the only way of avoiding the charge is by going to the post office the same day the parcels arrive, rather than waiting until the slip of paper arrives to tell you a parcel is waiting. I heard about someone being informed of a parcel 6 months after it had actually arrived and being charged 6 months storage fee!!
