Moving Day #2

Our second moving day went about as well as I expected. Steve and I left the apartment with a car load of stuff and arrived at the house at about 9:15 this morning. We spent a couple of hours cleaning the family room and master bedroom before the movers showed up with all of our stuff. They were actually about 15 minutes early...which is virtually unheard of here in India. They had two trucks full of our stuff that they unloaded for a little over a hour. Then they went to lunch and went to get the rest of our stuff. While they were gone for two hours, Steve and I cleaned out the kitchen cabinets. They finally came back with the rest of our stuff and quickly had it unloaded and were gone. Amazingly, all our boxes showed up...none were mysteriously missing. However, a lot of them have been opened...so I'm curious to actually see whether or not anything has been stolen out of them.

Throughout the day, I was finally able to do some laundry! Our new washer and dryer work great! I haven't messed with the dishwasher yet, but I'm sure it's probably pretty similar to U.S. dishwashers. Also, the permanent generator is now officially hooked up and ready for use.

After unwrapping the majority of our big pieces of furniture, we haven't had any major damage to anything. However, every piece of furniture has several nicks, scratches, and places where the varnish has been rubbed away. I'm not too happy about this, but I knew it was coming after seeing how they had packed things in China. When they first started packing in Beijing, I had told them to wrap things well and if I caught them not doing so, I brought it to their attention. However, they just had too many people in too many rooms for me to watch all of the time...and unlike our packers in the U.S. who took forever to pack us, the Chinese packers were in a big hurry. Anyway, now I will spend a lot of time photographing and documenting all of the damage that has occurred. I'm not sure that we will get compensated for any of it, and I guess I will have to just accept that my furniture is no longer perfect. I guess this was bound to happen sooner or later with all of the moves we have done in the past few years. If I want to move, I'm going to have to accept some wear and tear on our stuff. It still makes me mad though as we didn't have one new scratch or nick when we arrived in Beijing...and now less than a year later, everything is marked up.

The other excitement of the day occurred with our first gecko/lizard in the house. We were cleaning the family room. I was cleaning the entertainment center, and Steve was cleaning the windows and door leading out to the deck. Well, the windows have bars on them which makes it a little difficult to reach through to clean the windows. I suggested to Steve that he just open the windows and go outside on the deck to clean them. He had just got outside, and I had no more than said jokingly to him to watch out for the snakes and geckos on the deck when he squealed. He was cleaning the window frame and there was a very small gecko on it. Well, he didn't see it because it was dark brown...the same color as the woodwork on the window. Anyway, to make a long story short...I got our new India broom (by the way, anyone considering a move to India, bring your own brooms and mops...the ones that are available for purchase here are made cheap and don't work well). With the broom in hand, Steve was finally able to knock the gecko out onto the deck...after it had scurried all over the window frame and door frame inside the house. I was laughing very hard although Steve didn't think this whole experience was very funny. Anyway, one gecko down...and I'm sure a lot more to come!

Well, Steve and I are exhausted. We have decided to stay tonight and tomorrow night still in the apartment...even though our bed was assembled (and I had to refrain from crawling in it this afternoon), we still have at least two more trips of stuff out of the apartment. It's just easier to make one trip per day from the apartment to the house as the traffic is pretty bad and it takes about 1 1/2 hours to get there. So, tomorrow, Steve is back to work. I will drop him off on the way out to the house. I will work on unpacking and starting to organize things.

This weekend will be much of the same...unpacking and organizing...plus we still have a lot more rooms to clean (Steve has finally talked me into hiring a maid as the house is just too large for me to keep clean all of the time...especially if I want to have any social life or free time here). Also, we have to determine where to put our love seat. The family room is only big enough for our couch and oversized chair. Originally, we thought we were going to put the love seat in the office...however, it won't fit through the door. Right now, it is just sitting out in the foyer. I'm guessing this will probably be were it will end up staying as I'm not sure it will fit through any of the other doorways. Don't worry though...our foyer is HUGE! Luckily for us, the family room has the outside entrance to the deck, so the movers where able to bring the couch and chair through this bigger door. I don't know if our furniture is just really big or if India homes just have small doors.

Anyway, I've about had it for the day...so I'm off to bed!