I'm Leaving, On A Jet Plane

We began the process of packing for our move during Christmas, 2005. After a little over a month of hard work itemizing and packing all of our belongings, the movers came to our apartment in Pasadena and picked up all of our boxes, plus our bikes, and loaded them into a moving van.

Watching the moving van drive away with our stuff was a relief, as it was now out of our hands. Later on the 8th of February we got word from our movers that all of our belongings (except our bikes) fit into just one of the large wooden crates that the shippers fill and then put into the large metal containers :)

The bikes will be shipped separately.

Hopefully, after two months, we will be able to contact our movers and they will show up with our belongings at our new place in Christchurch!

Our job was not yet finished though. We still had to clean out our appartment, sell our vehicle, and try to accomplish what seemed like a never ending mountain of paperwork and phone calls to wrap up all that we could on this end.

We both have tickets in hand and our plane leaves for Rarotonga on Sunday, February 12th, at 10:30 PM.

My personal goal is to find a coconut crab climbing a coconut palm and take a picture of it :)

The final push

These last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. I don't remeber on day from the next, or what day it is. We've had to give up our beloved pets: my guinea pigs Salazar and Willie and Steven's monitor Lizard Skynard. We've had to make interminable phone calls here, there and everywhere. And packing, and more packing. We're selling some of our things, amazing how time consuming that can be. Steven quit his job last week, enough of the 14hr work days already! My last day at work is this friday, Feb 3d. Many things to do to help with the transition and so many people to say goodbye to! Well, we hope that a lot of those people will come and see us in our new home. We will be very happy to wave good bye to our stuff next wednesday, at least it'll be out of our hands for a couple of months. - Gaby