96 Boxes

They're all gone. All 96 boxes! Now that doesn't seem like much I suppose when you think it's everything we're bringing back to the States. And realize that hubby and I came to Korea with only 4 suitcases and no kids. So, we have accumulated.

A couple of you asked some questions in the comments of my last post, so I thought I'd answer them here.

Choosing a Shipper
If you have more than a few boxes to take back with you, then instead of mailing them, you use a shipper. We contacted three different companies. They each came to our house and gave us an estimate. Then we choose the company that we liked the best. We ended up not taking the cheapest one but the company with the best recommendations and service within our price range. That ended up being Transpact (they have the tiger emblem as you can see on all of the boxes).

Getting Ready

Then we take a number of days to get ready for them because each box is quite expensive. In shipping, you don't pay for weight but size. So we had a HUGE moving sale, and gave and threw out loads and loads and LOADS of stuff. The tricky part here in Korea is that nearly everything that you throw out must be recycled. Like food (yucky food bucket!), paper, plastics, and metals. If it doesn't fit one of those categories you have to PAY to throw it away because you have to use a certain expensive garbage bag. It's a lot of work, but it really makes you not want to throw stuff away.

Moving Day
On moving day, the movers come and you tell them what stays and what goes. They box it all up nice and pretty and put it in a crate.

You can see in this picture that they use a lift to take boxes in or out of a house and load them into a truck. Pretty cool, huh?

That crate (see the picture- we actually have three crates) is trucked to the port and put on the boat. It floats its way to us and then gets on another truck. The interesting part is the most expensive part of the trip is the trucks, not the boat fees.

Anne- If you're doing a really big move, it's so nice to have them come and pack it all up and do everything for you but it is expensive. So I guess you have to pay for luxury. But I don't know how else we would get the stuff back to the States otherwise.

So there you have it. A little lesson on Moving Across Continents!

Oh and Nora- yes, I hope to be teaching. We'll see if I get a job! If I don't, I'll for once have a clean house and heaps of time to write. Wow. That would be a dream, wouldn't it?

The most important advice I have to give is be ready for them to come and then have fun with it. Take lots of pictures and order in yummy food.

Or you can be ninjas like my boys and be the protector of the shipment in case any bad guys come.