Sea Shipment Day!

After 3 months and 10 days our stuff arrived! This should be a joy everyone feels at least once!  It is like Christmas and the first day in a new house rolled into one.  The sea shipment arrived in country either on June 30 or July 8 (conflicting info) and we were told it would take 5-7 business days to clear customs.  After not hearing a whole lot from our American contact Jason took matters into his own hands and reached out to the local contact.  Within 2 hours she told us it was being released that day (July 18) and would be delivered the following day.

Four "vaults" on the truck

Thankfully Jason had one more moving day of leave so he could stay home to assist.  The truck arrived with our four "vaults" and we watched them open then from our friends apartment.  Each vault is a wooden crate that is lined in plastic wrap and then has our boxes inside.  It was 5 movers and 2 furniture dollys!  You have to check off each box/item as it comes in to the apartment - they are all numbered - we had 136 items.  The goal was to unbox everything since we have NO room to store empty boxes and the trash is just a small trash can on each floor.  We started unboxing as they brought it in and once the truck was empty I had 5 Angolans in my house unboxing items.  They would open a box, unwrap something and then look at me and say "Madam?" That was a fun game for about an hour - they finally realized I didn't care where they put it. The entire unload and unpack lasted about 4 hours - after the whirlwind I was left with unpacked items on every surface you can imagine!  A sweet friend thought ahead and brought us dinner complete with paper plates and plastic cutlery!  I will have to pass that on to the next people who get stuff.

The checklist station for boxes coming in!

Not even a quarter of the boxes

The chaos of 5 movers in a 900 square foot apartment with 136 boxes 

It took another 2 days to really get everything organized and in it's place.  We had more room then we expected when it was all said and done.  We are using two of our three showers for storage (one is plastic bins and one is sporting goods like golf clubs) and we are also using the tub for suitcase storage!  We were a bit worried about the gym equipment we brought not fitting; it is a bit tight but it is workable.   The last thing to do is hang pictures and curtains which is occurring as I type.  Our building is managed by a Chinese group so the man hanging stuff is great (and inventive by using electrical wire to create a wire to mount instead of making 2 holes) but he speaks no English or Portuguese so it makes for interesting communications - luckily I have a a friend who speaks Mandarin so she is helping me explain what I wanted!

Where to sleep? And why did we bring so many clothes!