Women's Day and special post surprises

Yesterday was International Women's Day. It always takes me by surprise here, for us Brits don't really celebrate it. The Bosnians however, they go to town. It is huge here. You couldn't move yesterday for men carrying flowers and trinkets off to see their mother, wife, sister to say thank you, you are appreciated. Every single person I met yesterday wished me luck and gave me a big kiss, occasionally a little alarming but all very genuine. It seems that the popularity of Woman's Day is not limited to Bosnia either, the fascinating Paradise Lost in Translation blogging from Albania wrote about it yesterday in her post Women's Day which is well worth a read.

Needless to say Woman's Day didn't have that much of an impact in our house. The boys gave me some chocolate that nursery had given them to give to me, and promptly ate it themselves when I wasn't looking. Dave muttered something about manufactured holidays. Ah well. I didn't care, because my very first Secret Post Club parcel had arrived, from that irrepressible Rosie Scribble. It had all sorts in it, things to pamper myself with (very exciting), things to keep the boys occupied whilst I did so (very exciting) and a post card of my home town to remind us what we are missing. It's very beautiful, my home town, and as yesterday was grey, miserable, pollution filled and generally vile in Tuzla it was a real treat to be reminded of what we are going back to. So a huge thank you to Rosie for lightening up my day and not making me feel so left out as everyone else received their Women's Day gifts.

For those who don't know about it the Secret Post Club was started by Heather at Notes From Lapland. Anyone can join. These are the rules:

• You will be matched to both a sender and a receiver each month.
• On the 1st of the month I'll send you an email with the details of the person to whom you need to send something.
• You won't know who is posting you a parcel until it arrives - please don't spoil the surprise by telling the recipient or dropping hints and clues before it gets there.

I love this idea. Surprise parcels? For me? With handwritten addresses and everything? Sign me up. You can join to if you want, click here for more information.

I have enjoyed making my parcels too. Last month Battling On was the surprisingly early recipient of a Bosnian parcel, the post taking only 3 days to get from Tuzla to the UK which is a new record. She wrote about it here.

This month I've been hunting around Tuzla and came across a very interesting centre which uses art as a way to help people deal with the trauma they suffered during the war. Sadly I could only buy some very small pieces of art that they've done as it was the only things that would fit into an envelope but they do amazing decorations on windows and bottles, large canvasses and the artists who participate find their work very helpful. I hope that my recipient likes it, the parcel was posted yesterday. Here's hoping it gets to the UK before we do.