Good for you on breaking the ice on the boxes. What an awful symbol of your problem, and what a bad place for it to sit! We had something similar. When I told my 23 year old son about his father's affair, he punched the door to his room. It broke the door, pulled the hinges 1/2 way out of the casing, and the handle put a baseball size hole in the wall behind the door. It stayed like that for about 4 months, always reminding me of my husband's affair. Finally, I hired a carpenter to replace the door and fix the wall, and also had painters put a fresh coat of paint on all the doors in the house. Now the affair is truly gone.
Sorry you didn't get workbooks. I bet they charge the locals to buy them. Perhaps they are trying to keep the cost down. I did think it was very generous when they gave us each our own book, not just one per couple.
