Jan. 25, 2012 - They came, they saw, they dumped stuff.

Remember what I said about it being better to receive the ocean shipment by myself than to wait a week until Andrew could stay home with me?  I was WRONG.  Our apartment looks like a moving truck threw up inside of it.  To complicate matters, the movers unpacked nearly every single box, so there are just random piles of stuff everywhere.  We would normally have the movers unpack very little so that we could unpack stuff as we were ready for it.  However, we’ve been told by others here to go ahead and have the movers do it.  That way they can remove all the packing material, which is more difficult to dispose of here than in the States.  However, when you have a mover in every room and only one person (me) to supervise and help, you get random piles of stuff everywhere.  Of course, the fact that I don’t speak Japanese and only one member of the moving crew spoke English did add a wrinkle to the situation.

When they were loading the books onto the bookshelves, they asked if they should put them in any particular order.  Why, yes, I would like fiction grouped together, alphabetized by author.  Poetry in another section, women's studies, sports stories, history.  Don't worry, I said no.

Oh, and we volunteered to have the Cub Scout den meeting (Cooper’s first meeting here) at our house on Feb. 5.  They normally meet at the U.S. Embassy, but their regular meeting place is unavailable that day.  We’ve hosted plenty of den meetings, so we said that they could have the meeting here (which also means we can’t get lost trying to find a new place).  However, that was before I realized that a moving truck was going to throw up inside our house.  So we have 10 days to create some semblance of order.  Did I mention that there are 15 boys in the den? 

P.S. In case you were wondering, yes, Andrew is at fault for me agreeing to take the ocean shipment this week instead of next.  He made it seem like it was the reasonable thing to do.  

Here's a Japanese word I actually used the past few days (to the movers, though I'm pretty sure Andrew should have been using it with me):

Japanese word of the day:  sumimasen  (click to hear pronunciation) means "I'm sorry"