Our Quick Shipment Arrived!!!

We were so excited to get an email yesterday that our first shipment (quick shipment) has arrived and that they were available to deliver it today. Russ went into work thinking it would arrive after lunch but they were at the door by 9:30 ready to unload.He walked back to the apartment when he got my text message that they were there. It's always a happy day when you start seeing some of your belongings again. I now have my scrapbooking supplies so I can start working on my scrapbooks while in the TLF. Those of you that know me well know how much that means to me.

I spent my day opening up boxes and trying to find a place to stash everything in this tiny apartment. I have to say I wasn't very impressed with the company that packed this shipment. First off, the day they were packing we had showed them the items to go into the shipment and I sat nearby while they packed. I happened to look up and saw one of the packers packing items that were set aside for the longer shipment. I stopped him and he unloaded a few things but as I unpacked today I realized he had packed a whole box of wall pictures that I definitely didn't want this early. Once we get the car we will try to take them to Russ's office to store them until we get our house.  Then, as I'm unpacking I see that they had

just put my desktop computer into a box with no packing or padding around it and stuffed a few scrapbook albums around it. I made sure to hook it up this afternoon to make sure it still worked. My monitor was haphazardly thrown in as well with just a small amount of paper around it. I had also put in two ceramic mugs for tea and coffee and they were sitting on top of the picture frames (that I didn't want) with no paper wrapped around them at all. It's a miracle that they weren't shattered into a million pieces along with the glass on the frames. I'm thinking these boys need to be retrained in the art of packing a shipment for overseas delivery. Amazingly enough, the only damage I've seen so far was to the outside of an album. The faux leather cover was ripped and the interior padding was hanging out. I'm not sure it's worth claiming but it was obviously another item that was forced into a spot that was too tight to fit it.  It's hard to explain but just having these few items show up at our door left me with a more settled feeling. Gradually we're getting back to a little bit of normalcy. This shipment arrived two weeks earlier than they estimated so we're hopeful that our longer shipment will also arrive early. Tomorrow we pick up the car which will also allow us a second storage area for anything we don't need to keep in the apartment. Next item of business is to begin our search for a house. We'll need to sign up with the housing office and they will assign a Japanese realtor to us to show us around to all the available houses.