Well it's not a "riddle" it's just that's how they are. They are very poor communicators in certain areas. I'm first generation here in the states. :) I"m sorry to hear of your troubles however know that you have not been alone...that's how some of these folks are...silly...and you have to be MORE creative than them to get what you want, which is just letters and photos...LOL! We send money orders for major holidays and certain birthdays gifts. We have yet to receive acknologement that they get the gifts but as sure as I'm sitting here they write a lot of letters in return so you know that they get them. Some have communicated to us by email as well. :) But we go one step further. The relatives that do say thanks for the gifts, we send to them all the gifts we intend to give to our remaining relatives (gifts/money orders) and ask that in return they give us photos of opening the gifts. Sure enough that works. That's our form of receipt. LOL! It's just a different culture. They love getting the gifts and money but God forbid they'd thank you for it. Another idea is to send gifts by registered mail which sends us a postcard back from Croatia post office. I think USPS has a proper term for it. Only problem is that you have to write on the postoffice form what you are sending. Depending on the item the receiver may have to pay tax for it at the post office. : ( So you have to be sort of creative in your packaging and describing what you are actually sending. Depending on the item the tax is really burdensome. Also sometimes it's been known that their post office people (especially during the war) opened up the packages before it got to the receiver. That was AWFUL! Money orders got lost, cd's went missing, good clothing never delivered, etc. But as of the last 2 years we've not had any issues other than one money order getting lost and we got American Express to refund... Personal bank checks are (per my own relatives) very hard for them to cash than money orders from, say, american express travelers checks. Our relatives will not cash personal checks for it's a hassle over there, so they say. Can't remember the reason but they will not cash them, money orders (from USPS office works the best!!!) are fantastic at least you can put their name on it. But money orders and/or travelers checks get cashed fast! LOL! We call them to verify delivery and that it's actually them who've cashed it. For relatives that we have not heard from awhile we sent gifts, but what we did was to send it to relatives that are currently speaking to us. We send them a money order to thank them and ask if they can hand deliver the gift to our other relatives. For whatever reasons that works and you usually get a photograph back. Then the letters start coming. Start with sending a small gift to a child then work your way on up...it's worked for us and for example my dad a few years ago got reunited with his 80 something year old uncle who is a Monk in Italy! LOL! Is that cool or what?! LOL! Hilarious uncle, sends us photos of him in traditional Monk rope with sandals to boot! LOL! On Apr 6, 2007, at 8:09 PM, Tat417761@cs.com wrote: > You may be wrong. A problem we frequently found is, due to lack of > acknowledgement, we never knew whether the gift actually arrived. > And with personal > checks, too proud to cash them, they did not return them or tell us > what > happened, so we still had to carry them as expense. > It was a riddle, probably some kind of pride while they were > considered > "poor" and we were of course "rich Americans". In a message dated 4/6/2007 6:25:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, prodan@alltel.net writes: > > Send them an american express money order during a holiday or > birthday, and/or a present from the US and I'll bet they'll start > writing... > Funny how "material things" tends to open people up..