Which way did it go?

HI!!! Back again. Another trip. To Hawaii to visit the family and celebrate the 1st Birthday of my sister's twins. No pictures as I haven't had time yet to unpack my suitcase let alone download pictures but here I am on the Blog.

The warnings that Re-patriation (return to the Home Country) is harder than the leaving are to be headed. It is. Can't always explain it but it's a different adjustment. The school counselor put it well to Rachel this morning "make sure if something doesn't make sense, you speak up - even though the teachers will be notified you've come from overseas/Int'l school, you look and speak like any other kid around them and they won't know that things are different for you unless you say something." We don't look or sound different but we sure feel that way.

Good News! Our sea-going container of household goods finally reached the Port in Oakland/Alameda.

Bad News! US Customs randomly selected our container for intensive screening. Part of the "harder" of Re-patriation in our book.

It may be that it will still get released quickly but depends on their backlog and whether they want to take a quick peek or deeply dig into our stuff. I can say for the record - there are no verboten, re-sale, weapons, flammable, animal, plant, food product or otherwise forbidden items in our container. So I don't care other than I don't want yet another person touching my stuff when I'm not looking. Just creeps you out a little - or a lot. And we're still rattling around this empty house.

So I'll show off the container for you. After you see the Magic Box.

Magic Box:

This box contains ALL the pieces necessary to put ALL the disassembled items of furniture back together. It is a very, VERY important box. US Customs better not mess with it. Just sayin.'

A lot of people wonder how the boxes/furniture got out of our house and to the container. No one wants to traipse all down 120 steps to the garage area. Everything was entirely boxed and wrapped (patio furniture included!) then loaded onto this small truck via the wanderweg (walking path) next to our house and driven and reloaded into the container. I don't know how many trips they made.

But they made quite a few because I became a bit concerned that what I saw still in my house would not fit into what appeared to be a quickly filling container. The crew chief was pretty sure it would all fit but wasn't fully committed until the end. He said the Swiss tend to pack heavier with the paper wrapping than other shipping companies so they take up more space. Apparently they used over 7 kilos (18-20 lbs or so) of paper on our kitchen items alone. My gosh - we had a 40 ft container, surely it would all fit???

It did. Snug and tight with a bit left over. Not much left over.

Our container has gone by truck from Waedenswil to Basel, loaded on a ship for its trip up the Rhein River to Rotterdam, loaded on a cargo vessel which traveled Rotterdam to Oakland via the Panama Canal and is sitting and waiting it's final destination by truck when released.

I wish we could have earned some miles for freight. Praying the customs process is speedy.

It will be a real treat when this shows up at our door.

Hmmm - What will the neighbors say?