The very next time you are fortunate enough to vacation, visit a foreign or exotic place, take an hour or so of EXTRA SHOPPING TIME and make a serious effort ,"from a child's perspective", to take to your children back home a whole NEW sort of gifting selections for holiday or birthday by buying MANY things they:

1. Don't have
2. Will likely never see on a shelf in your town
3. Will REALLY be SURPRISED over
4. Can genuinely share with guests/friends that is NOT LIKELY to be had by others
5. Can challenged their imagination
6. They can start a new collection of things from other places
7. Can admit that sparks their interest in world differences
8. Can enjoy that will break their boredom/monotony with the typical and limited "same ol'-same ol' by a different label/name"
9. Can see how other peoples have new/different ideas
10. Can feel you have put some real THOUGHT into your souveniers for them "while they stayed behind"

Examples:

• Carved wooden games, game pieces with funny instructions written in broken English the best they could translate
• Woven items of unusual patterns, textures, materials, purposes
• Small tools for crafts/play
• "Collections" important to those particular places/peoples
• Candies in unusual wrappers/shapes/ingredients
• Spinning tops of brilliant colors.
• Nametags equivilent to the children's names in another language
• Soaps and toiletries of different fragrances, shapes, and colors
• Unusual clothing, hats, shoes, slippers, fabrics
• Picture souveniers in variety bundles of places/animals there
• Small hand-held electronic or manual games designed by them
• Hair ornaments/jewelry of a different sort, material or design
• Small crafts indigenous to the area for children/young adults
• A variety of unusual coinage
• Short journal explaining each item, as you understand it to be, having inquired at purchase
• Each wrapped by the other country's clerk in other country's gift paper and trim
• A few "foreign" stamps/stickers
• A magazine/newspaper from the different place

We did this very thing and it was one of the most momentous things our children ever received from us, well worth our time/extra effort /money for added carry-on "baggage". Where there's a will, there's a way. If having to go through customs, buy the unique gift wrapping/trim and wait to wrap until home in your privacy.

(Even if any of the items ever show up on your neighborhood shelves, your children will have already enjoyed them.)

By Lynda from TX

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