Happy Birth to You!

Today is my little sister's birthday, and I just wanted to congratulate her on being super, duper old! Have a great day, little sis! I love you more than ice cream, which I like a lot.

Speaking of my little sister, every time I come overseas (which has only happened three times, mind you), I make sure to get her a small animal. I am not really sure why, it just kind of developed over time.

When I went to People to People's Leadership camp for a week one summer, I got her a tribal horse from a museum I visited. It was one of the first times I had been away from her for an extended period of time (not that a week is really that long, but it seemed long then). So, I wanted to give her a gift when I returned, also since Washington DC is just cool and I thought she needed a gift from there. The tribal horse somehow ended up being named Senor Wally Pringles (by me, although I am not sure where I got that name). I was in seventh grade and probably thought it was hilarious.

Then when I went to the UK in eighth grade for about three weeks, I wanted to get her a cool animal gift again since she really liked the last one. I think that was when I got her a Dragon named Dennis. If I remember correctly, he was bought in Wales, but I could be mixing him and another animal figure up. I have bought her quite a few over the years now, and it is hard to keep them all straight as well as remember them all.

Either way, Dennis is a bad ass. He is not very large but he is made of a dark gray, shiny rock and looks like he would kill you as soon as he looked at you, if he was alive. (Luckily, he is not.) And he is definitely from the UK, whether from the first or second trip overseas is the real question.

When I went overseas the second time after twelfth grade, i got her quite a few animal figurines. I actually attempted to get one from each country I went to, but that was a bust since not every one of the ten countries I visited had figurine shops in easy access and/or I had almost no time to look around at them.

I know that in Italy I got her a glas, white stallion. His name escapes me, but I would guess something along the lines of Fernando. In Germany I bought her a small porcelain doll that looked a bit like her and named it Lurane (purposefully spelled strangely). I know for a fact that I got her something else in Germany as well, but I cannot remember what it was. I also got her a postcard of Prince Charles's face in England that trip, and although it is not technically an animal or a toy, I still count it.

That postcard was actually a bit creepy also. It was definitely not one of the best photos of Prince Charles that they could have picked. She thought it was hilarious though. And honestly, we could not remember the Princes' names (William and Harry) so we thought he was suppose to be one of them, and we spent quite some time trying to figure out if he was suppose to be the hot one or not. (We did not find him attractive, but why would you make a postcard of the less hot one, and not then make one of the hot one?) Luckily our mother sorted us out and told us he was the father of Harry and William. I really do not know why we did not just google it.

This trip I have worked really hard to get her gifts of animals from every country we have gone to. I think it is driving my flatmates, who I travel with, crazy. We will go into a shop and I will look around for small animals, and if they are too expensive, or not good enough, I will tell them we need to keep looking. In Scotland I think we went into fifteen shops before I found one I liked.

I do not want to spoil the surprise for her, so I will just say that I got two things from Ireland, two from Wales, one from Scotland, and two from England. We are planning to go to Spain in December and I hope to get something good from there too!

Until next time...

Embrace the Odd,
Caitlin

"Wear the old coat and buy the new book." -Austin Phelps