Box Day!

Nothing excites us HP girls as much as Box Day.

Although if you ask The Hubby, we girls are extremely excitable, so it would be more apt to say that Box Days is one of numerous things that make us giddy and hyper and all chirpy.

Homeschoolers will most likely know what Box Day is, and know the unbridled joy that it brings. It's like Christmas, birthdays, and Book Fairs with Spending Money all rolled into one. It's the day when the new school year's materials are delivered to your house in one (or more!) glorious box.

Thanks to the generosity of our beloved Uncle Bob, we've had a Box Day in some form since we started on our homeschool journey. Our first year was a big balikbayan box of books, as we tried to figure out the best fit for us.

Our second and third years' materials came in several USPS boxes that we had to pick up at the Paranaque Post Office and eventually, the Baguio Post Office. We made those USPS boxes into magazine racks. We sort of settled on Bookshark and The Critical Thinking Co books for the past two school years.

This coming school year, we got our materials two quarters early! We finally settled on Sonlight, and they shipped to us directly (more on why we chose Sonlight in another post). We got the shipment last week, and the new school year begins in September. We aren't overly eager. Not at all.

Now our Box Day was almost tragic--UPS (the courier) was originally charging us a five-digit sum as duties and taxes before they would deliver our books! It's a good thing that we're aware that books and educational materials should be both tax and duty free, as you can read on the Official Gazette of the Philippine government.

It did delay the delivery (by a day), our polite request that UPS have our package reassessed. But in the end, we didn't have to pay a single thing. It also helped that we sent them a link to the Bureau of Customs memorandum circular No. 142-2014 which specifically instructs Customs officials to not tax or impose any duties on books.

But all's well that ends well. Hooray for Box Day 2019!