Longing for Belongings

We packed our belongings in January, with a final mad dash the first week of February, and the movers picked up our stuff for shipping on February 8. We were told that our shipment would reach Auckland in 8 to 10 weeks time. We had heard from others that their shipments had arrived in even less than 8 weeks, so Gaby and I left LA on February 12, spent a week in the Cook Islands, and figured that in as little as 4 weeks we would have our stuff. However, that has not been the case. In the beginning of April we were contacted by our shipping company and informed that our belongings would arrive in Auckland on April 22. We were also given the container number and the manifest for the ship it was loaded on. Gaby researched the ship on the internet and found that it did not even leave Long Beach harbor until March 13, and the ship was destined for Hong Kong via the North Pacific, with several stops at various Chinese ports along the way, no doubt picking up numerous containers filled with cheap plastic toys before heading back to LA. At some point the container was offloaded in Hong Kong, and then loaded onto a ship destined for Australia. Last week I received another call from our movers who informed me that due to severe weather in Australia - Australia was hit by a bad hurricane the week before - shipping schedules were behind. The soonest possible ship that would get underway for Auckland would arrive on May 9, with no guarantee that our container would be on it. The saga of the stuff continues...