Moving Day!

It’s Korean tradition to order Noodles with Black Bean Sauce (짜장면 Jjajangmyeon) as your first meal after a long day of moving. We were more than happy to partake in this tradition.

Unpacking priorities

Our crap finally arrived! Or I should say, it was finally delivered after sitting in storage for the past couple of months while we sorted out our apartment.

On moving day the head mover came into our house and did a quick survey of the windows, checking each one and peering down onto the street below. Sly and I were confused, what did the windows have to do with the move? Finally Head Mover stopped in one of the smaller bedrooms, peered down, opened the window, and yelled at some tiny people 17 floors down. We heard a truck engine start and saw a moving van with crated items pull towards the building.

They were going to haul our boxes 17 floors up through the bedroom window…

Wait.

What?

Immediately I envisioned a scene from a Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner cartoon: a giant pulley,a dangling, nearly threadbare rope, a baby grand piano being hauled up 17 floors and then falling back down the 17 floors onto someone’s head.

Thankfully, it didn’t happen that way. I was kind of concerned they were going to ride to the top with a cherry picker or window washer type mechanism — which seemed rather dangerous — but instead the movers used something that can be described as a sort of box escalator? First the movers removed the sliding glass doors in the bedroom (they can do that?). Then they TAPED the escalator/ladder thing to the railing. Once *secured* (gulp) the upstairs movers yelled down to the downstairs movers who started loading up (and I mean loaded to capacity) a platform with boxes. Finally, the downstairs movers pressed a button and in about 30 seconds a platform of our (unsecured) crap flew up into the sky.

Once at window level, the upstairs movers unloaded the platform by leaning over the railing and pulling off the boxes and parcels with a hooked stick. It was actually an extremely efficient process: one grabbed the boxes using the stick, another accepted the box and called out the moving number, I checked off the number, the box was handed to another guy to put on a dolly where it was carried to the correct room. Once the box arrived in the room the Head Mover removed the sticker and placed it in a row so that we could double check.

All together, including time to assess and set up the windows and box escalator, coffee and donut break, meeting with a customs agent (surprise! I had no idea he was coming and Sly was away getting coffee at the time so we just stared at each other while he showed me his badge for what seemed like forever), another meeting with a housing inspector, a super long lunch break, unpacking of boxes, setting up what furniture we could find the hardware for, triple checking all inventory/numbers and searching for boxes without numbers, and removal of all boxes and paper — took about five hours. Pretty painless as far as moves go.

When we were prepping for our move over three months ago, we spent a lot of time going through our things — mostly furniture, clothes, and various home goods. What we didn’t really get to, however, was our kitchen stuff, which, no kidding, comprised at least 1/2 of our total moving shipment. I love that we brought our mini fridge (why?) but not a microwave. And all the stupid tupperware. This was my chance to FINALLY just have ONE SET OF MATCHING TUPPERWARE. Nope. All of that, in all its unmatched glory, came with us. I will never be free of the curse of the Tupperware.

On the other hand, for the first time in my entire life I have the sweetest walk-in closet of my dreams — It’s not Kardashian level but it’s the kind with built in shelves and drawers and split racks for hanging shirts and pants. The irony of this is that both of us got rid of so much clothes that we actually don’t need a closet this big.** I’m not complaining though, I am gonna enjoy this closet while I can.

So far, we have only found a few broken items — a wine glass, a piece of pottery, and some end tables. Not bad considering the journey our crap had to make, overseas and up the side of a building.

**Shoes excluded. In our previous homes I have had my “shoe collection” scattered across multiple closets so in my head I tricked myself into believing I didn’t have *that* many shoes. In our current apartment we have dedicated shoe closets near the entry way. For the first time ever I can see all my shoes in one location and… Holy crap. I have more shoes than God. I am not quite sure just yet if this pleases or disgusts me.