28 June, 2014

The final throes of moving to Australia

Today we moved out of our house, drove across "town" and are ensconced in our mission's guest home for a night before flying tomorrow evening. We're definitely in the "Zone" now, although I've just spent the last hour looking online at Contents Insurance for our house in Australia, that's not good Zone behaviour. Before that, however, I played (and lost badly) a game of 7Wonders.

Soon we'll go for a walk and find some Japanese food to enjoy before crashing. I'm actually pretty tired. I woke up at 4.30, thinking (typical Zone behaviour), eventually dropped back to sleep after reading my Bible for nearly an hour. Then everyone was up and raring to go at 7am, but it took us six hours to finalise our cleaning and most especially wash and dry all the sheets, towels, and rags. It's a rainy day, so our Japanese dryer got a great workout this morning.

My especial delight this morning was seeing the boys entertain themselves for a good part of the morning, and two of them be especially helpful on a couple of occasions (beyond what was asked of them). This is so different to moving with little ones. 

Last time we moved, they were four years younger, making our youngest five. There is a huge difference between having 5, 7 & 11 year olds and having 9, 11, and 15 year olds! I'm enjoying it. Tomorrow we'll be using them to the max as we transport ourselves to the airport via public transport (i.e. train, of course) and then pick up the rest of our luggage. 

This is the first time we've travelled with such a large amount of luggage. We're travelling on a budget airline (because it is an overnight flight). The bonus is that for a small fee we could increase our luggage allowance to 40kg per person. I don't think we've hit the maximum, but it has streamlined the process of getting the majority of our wardrobe to Australia. Moving countries for a year is a bit different to going on holidays! But it does mean we have a lot of bags. Thankfully a bunch of strong boys to help with trolleys etc. 

The reason we're meeting some of it at the airport is due to an amazingly convenient Japanese service called takubin. It is like a postal service, but covers a much wider type of product, including getting suitcases to the airport. It is also waaaay cheaper. Yesterday David rang them up, got some labels from a local convenience store, filled them out, and a truck came around 5 pm to collect our luggage from our house. We'll pick it all up at the airport just prior to checking in. Amazing! Especially when compared to the thought of travelling on trains with three or four pieces of luggage each (including a backpack).

Well, the family has just finished playing Ticket to Ride and it's food time again. 



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