Whirlwind of Guests and Shopping

(Edited to correct typos)
It's clichéd, but it's true. When it rains it pours.

It's not the first time it happens... and it goes like this: many months go by uneventfully, long, "lonely" months without any people coming from Brazil to visit, but then, all of a sudden, coincidentally, several friends come at once and we have a happy overdose of friends, conversations, packed days, late night sleeping, etc. (and, later hangovers too...)

Last Wednesday our dear longtime friend Marco and his family (his lovely wife, who by coincidence was K's math student in 8th grade years ago, and his two sons, aged five and one) came to stay a couple of days. I took them to Longwood Gardens on Thursday, but other than that, every single minute was spent inside various stores. It's like that with most people who come visit from Brazil because certain things are much cheaper and better quality here and they want to take advantage of that and buy clothes, bedding, toys, sneakers, electronics and other assorted things.

On Friday morning they left to go to D.C. and on Friday night another friend [K's best friend, boarding academy and college roommate] was supposed to arrive, but his flight was canceled, poor thing, and he spent the night in Houston's airport and arrived only at noon on Saturday to stay little over 24 hours with us. He couldn't really do any more shopping because many boxes of stuff (including a telescope) had been delivered to our house in the weeks prior to his arrival. We had to help him pack, though, so we stayed up very late for that. He's probably on his way back to Brazil now and tomorrow our friends return from D.C. to hit some more stores (no tax on clothes and shoes here in PA, unlike in MD), collect all the goods from their shopping sprees and then drive to Quebec to visit another friend.

And on Thursday another friend arrives from Brazil, this time on "business"... Our new "business" -- bringing baby and children's clothes from seasonal/end of stock clearance sales to Brazil to sell there. Yeah, I know... not really a job or anything. But I have to confess something. I enjoy all the shopping, particularly for the cutest baby girl clothes -- I revel in that! This all began years ago when this friend and his wife sent me some money to buy clothes for their son and daughter. I did it for two-three years and they had even suggested that we begin to bring more clothes to Brazil to sell, but it was only this year, after buying some irresistibly cute baby girl dresses for another friend's daughter (my "borrowed niece," daughter of K's best friend who just spent 24 hours here) for a mere dollar each, I decided we should give it a try. Let's see how it works.

So now you know why I was so busy back in January when my husband first went to Brazil carrying a couple of suitcases full of cute children clothes. It does feel weird to be doing that, though, because I really don't like consumerism and I try to curb it in my personal life as much as possible. In addition, and I'm appalled at how absolutely fictitious clothing prices are since after the season is over stores can sell them at 80-90% discount -- which suggests that these clothes are sold at an OBSCENE profit to begin with and people still buy them! Well, and don't get me started in talking about fashion -- oh boy, I really have lots of issues with THAT! Yeah, I don't feel very good, particularly seeing where all those clothes are manufactured. Oh well... why am I even writing about this, I wonder.

Oh, yeah... and I should be working on my dissertation's conclusion, and not preparing spreadsheets with lists of clothes and packing them into suitcases for my friends. It's an interesting distraction, though... particularly the girl clothes :-) (sigh).