Packing

The Visa saga is over.  It took many emails, several phone calls to Bangladesh, a drive to Canberra, three cancelled plane flights - but it finally arrived.  The trip to Canberra made it worthwhile.  They were going on holiday (it is the end of Ramadan) so our personal requests made a difference.  After three weeks of waiting for documents it ended up taking just one day.

The thought of packing makes me not want to travel.  It is even harder when you don't know much about where you are going or have any idea about the apartment you are staying in for the next two years.  We have been informed that they are usually large, have tiled floors, basic furniture and usually poor quality kitchen equipment.

For foodies like ourselves that is a challenge.

• How many crystal wine glasses (assuming we can get wine)?
• What variety of plates do we need?
• Do we take the cast iron frying pan, the wok, the blender, the ice-cream maker?
• Do we take the candle sticks ( the power fails quite often!)
• How many kitchen knives do we need?

And how much of our art collection to take and what about that very special rug?  I hear we need a fan for when the air-conditioning fails and a lamp because the lighting is quite dim.

Our house looks bare.  Our old couch goes today.  Sold for $5!  Then there is two camping chairs, a milk crate table and a mattress on the floor.  All the paintings are packed and there is piles of paper to be sorted through and discarded.

Much of our stuff gets put at the front door with our free sign on it.  We have given away huge amounts of stuff.

Only four days left then it is on the plane.

Can't wait - if only the house would pack itself!