vacation - and trying to take advantage of different countries

in a little over a week, i'm going to Ontario and Michigan to visit (yay for seeing family and friends!) and since i'm travelling all the way there, i've been trying to figure out how best to take advantage of all the countries that i live in and/or am going to visit.

so, i've been thinking about what to bring back. a nice dutch birthday calendar (for my brother, who as far as i know never reads this blog, so i can tell all of you :) although he now has a laptop, so who knows, maybe he'll be my friend on facebook pretty soon?!?) and stroop waffels and chocolates, and so on. oh, and bike locks - the kind that you permanently attach to the back of your bike and locks your back tire - quick and convenient and helpful against low-key theft.

and i've been ordering books on amazon.com - because english books are pretty much all cheaper in the US. and i'll be visiting a couple of discount book stores while i'm in Michigan :) and there's this shoe store that i want to visit while i'm also there - high quality discounted shoes. i could use some new sandals :)

and i'm picking up a used game (the farming game) - after a bit of googling, i found a cheap copy of it that i was going to get shipped to me - but then turns out i could pick it up from him, since the guy works less than 10km from where i'm staying (convenient, eh?) and i'm looking forward to trying to play this with my dad - just to see what he has to say about it...

and then there's this store i often buy clothes at in canada - and go shopping with my mom and/or my sisters. i don't really like shopping, but since i don't go very often it generally means i could always use some new clothes - and if i have to go shopping, i like doing it with my mom and sisters. and i managed to redeem some air miles for gift certificates to one of my favourite stores (reitman's) - i'll never have enough air miles to fly anywhere, so i'm glad to be actually able to use them for something - and turns out i have enough air miles that i can also share the certificates with my family :)

all of these things, thinking about what i'd like - what i can bring from here and what i can bring here from there (and how to share those things with people i care about) makes me more and more excited about going on vacation. this just adds more joy to my continued anticipation of seeing others!