Now come the feats of incredible strength

We received our furniture yesterday, and aside from a couple of dings and a broken kiddie plate, everything fared well. I hope I can say the same for all of our stuff that will be in storage stateside for 3 years.

The first day of unpacking is always fun, sort of like Christmas, reuniting with your favorite things after so long. It's also quite fun to play "what was the mover thinking"? I unpacked my sofa table drawers and found: coasters, a pair of flip flops, a random high heel, a container of cinnamon sugar, and a tube of sunblock. Packing like that takes some effort, because none of that stuff was even in the same room.

The second day of unpacking just sucks because it's the 'worker bee' day to find places for everything. Inevitably it's too much stuff for your space. As I put things away, I can't help feel a bit shameful; we have too much. The clothes I just couldn't live without, gadgets, toys, electronics, all so very unimportant in the big scheme of things. Clearly we can get by on less--we just lived out of 4 suitcases for 3 months and were just fine.

My overindulgent self witnessed some very interesting moving techniques yesterday. Our boxes all arrived on our floor via elevator. Not a big deal, you're thinking, except that the elevators here are teeny. Ours says it fits 5 people, but they had to have tested that theory using weightless pygmy people. Riding on it with just the three of us is pushing it. So up our stuff came, load after load on the elevator.

Some of our items, like bookcases, mattresses and sofa would not fit in the elevator, so the movers either had to carry them up twelve flights of narrow stairs, which they did for the two former, or hoist them up to the balcony with ropes. Because we had pouring rain all day, our sofa had to wait downstairs until this morning, when they returned to haul that sucker up...a far cry from the hydraulic lift they used in Korea.

Teague was happy to see his Thomas train set and all of his familiar toys, and I was less than thrilled that he discovered the once hidden harmonica and musical drumsticks right away. Nevertheless, we're so thankful to finally be settled in a place and have our things. Peanut butter, I have missed you!


That tiny guy down by the pool is holding the rope out to keep the sofa from hitting the other balconies on the way up. It took 5 guys about an hour and there was more grunting than any weight room I've ever been in.

The fragile item strategically placed at the bottom of the heavy load. Sidenote: frágil is the same word in espanol. You'd think they'd have some idea...