Moving
The movers came yesterday! Part of James's relocation package is movers. This is a good thing because moving all your shit across the ocean = mucho bucks. I think we talked to someone about it at one point and it was somewhere along the lines of £10,000. That's not money I particularly want to spend. If you catch my drift.
So he came through our apartment, looked at everything. We did start to pack a few things, and still have a million boxes from our last move, but all of that is moot. Because they are insuring all of our shit, anything we've packed will be repacked. And they will provide us with brand new boxes. Because if something happens in transit because of an old box, they are responsible.
So.
On the 24th, they arrive with a van, movers, boxes and other packing paraphernalia. They pack us all day on the 24th. They also possibly pack us on the 25th, if necessary. They will disassemble our Ikea wardrobes (which BARELY made the move here and will certainly not come with us to the States) and anything else we don't want to bring with us and take it away. They will recycle any boxes or anything else we're leaving behind.
We get to ship 1000 pounds of crap by air and the rest by sea. The air stuff will take about 2 weeks to arrive. The sea stuff will take 5? weeks. Depends on how long it takes to get through customs and fatherland security and such. Obviously we will also bring four or so suitcases of stuff with us.
We have a million forms to fill out, but the moving company only does overseas moving and has been doing it for 50 years, so they seem very competent. I did remember to ask if we needed to contact the council about blocking off some parking spaces for the truck, but he already had it written down. Even the parking space numbers. Good stuff.
I have to admit I find it sort of amusing that when I moved over here, it was only with a couple of suitcases full of clothes and six or eight boxes of books shipped book rate (which took about a month and a half to get here). Packing light, clearly. :)
As far as immigration goes, we're working on it. There's confusion with the embassy and a recent change in legislation means we did not get the visa as expected. We have been approved. We just need to send them more documentation. The lawyers are working on it. Hopefully (please send good thoughts our way), this will be resolved before the end of the week.
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Good luck with the moving. Having just made the cross-pond move in the other direction (with nothing broken or lost) I was very impressed with the professional movers and loved being able to just sit back and watch them do all the packing :)
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Beth Ballingall
food lover : world traveller : gamer : New Yorker : twenty-something : former Londoner : handbag lover : erstwhile soprano : geek
SO many good thoughts. I hope your lawyers are up to snuff on what they need to do, and don't screw it up yet again.
James's new employer must be furious.