Visit with my brother

Most of you know that my whole family lives in Romania and it's a great treat when I get to see them. For the past few years, my brother has been coming once a year for some training somewhere in the US and then comes over to visit us. It's fun, but so exhausting in the same time. You might wonder why? Well, not because he is hight maintenance, or demanding, but because the time he visits us is the only time he goes shopping for anything (back home, my sister in law does all the shopping in the house...)
So, I have spend the last 5 days between Target, Old Navy, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Burlington Coat Factory, Walmart, the mall, Payless, The Shoe Depot, Borders, Game Stop, and then back to Target, Old Navy, the mall... you get the idea!
It was fun, but even for me it was all too much.

The very interesting thing was that while I though some of the things he was interested in were expensive (a pair of sneakers for $90 seams like a lot of money in my opinion), he was very excited at the prospect of not having to pay 5 times the price! Yup, surprizing as this sounds, you can actually find anything and everything in Romania, but 5 times more expensive than here. So no wonder I had to give my brother one of our bags to bring all his purchases home. As much as I hated going back and forth between the stores mentioned above, it was fun to pick up things for my niece and nephew and know that they will be excited about it. My niece is 4 and she all about pink and dolls, and my nephew is almost 9 and loves his Game Boy!

But al the end of the day, I am glad this is all over. Yes, I will miss having him around the house (I will not miss the snoring noises though), and having the chance to speak Romanian (yup, Alan still doesn't know much of it), but I am glad life is getting back to normal. As sad as this sounds, I am almost glad to be back at work to get some peace!

Cheers!