Stuff arrived! - March 3-5, 2010

Finally after two full months, 70 boxes that we shipped from LA have arrived to our new apartment!!  I knew that we sent quite a bit of dishes and glasses, so we went to ASKO at the beginning of Feb to buy a piece of furniture hoping that it will be here by the time our stuff gets here.  But, I am not sure whether it was due to my hubby giving a wrong phone number to the store or whether it was just a Czech way of dealing with deliveries, we didn't get the furniture on time. 

So, on March 3rd, the movers came and unpacked everything and left the dishes and glasses all over the place in the kitchen and living room area.  They put most of the clothes that fit into the closets - well, randomly of course as they had no way of gussing my thinking of how I wanted to organize our closets.  I don't have an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, but I do like to organize things rather than letting things scattered around the house. 

The movers were very efficient and loaded all 70 boxes, unpacked everything, and took out the empty boxes out within 2.5 hrs.  Superb!  Plus, our most wanted also arrived.  The elliptical machine!!   I know it was an overkill to send it across the ocean, but we figured we would need it especially during the snow season.  

Anyway, after the movers finally left, I sat in the middle of piles with gG contemplating where to start. 

I decided to tackle our clothes first.  Unlike our house in LA, we don't have walk-ins in this apartment.  Consequently, I already knew we will be short in hanging space as there are more shelves than hanging areas, so I folded most of my pants and T-shirts and placed them on the shelves and decided to use the hanger for dresses and linen shirts only.  Also a piece of IKEA drawers, which we never really utilized too much before, helped quite a bit.  The challenge was on my hubby's side, as his clothes are much bigger than mine by nature and take more space. I decided to hang suits, jackets, pants, and some shirts and decided to fold some shirts, T-shirts, pants, vest, and sweaters.  It seemed like the folding task took me forever, but I managed to get eveything done in 2 hrs.  Then I organized the office area.  We had to wait to clean the kitchen area until we got the furniture delivered, which was scheduled for March 5th.

On March 5th, the long awaited furniture arrived!  We missed it the first time they delivered.  This apartment is highly secured and very overpriced for Czech standard, but it doesn't even have a receptionist downstairs.  It has a button right next to the door which should call our apartment so that I can ring people in, but it never worked.  So, ASKO guys called my hubby, but the phone connection was very bad and they couldn't communicate (well, communication would be difficult to begin with because of the languae barrier, but...anyway).  

So, they just left.  I was semi-desperate to get the furniture before the weekend, so we ended up asking Bob's analyst (super lady Jana!) to call them to redeliver it on the same day.  Jana has been more than a great help for us ever since we got here.  Without her, I don't think we could have accomplished anything.  Most of the store clerks or delivery people do not speak English, so it has been a challenge for us.  Anyway, ASKO came back with our furniture right away, and I got a plan for the full afternoon to build the furniture again.

This piece of furniture was a challenge. It took me almost 4 hours to build it. And, I made a slight mistake, too (not sure if you can tell by the picture, but it is rather obvious) :-)   But we got the furniture we can now put our dishes and glasses in.  By 18:00, everything was in place!