Our sea shipment arrived!

Our stuff left LA December 19 in this container -- pictured here right outside our LA home -- and arrived in Shanghai right after we did, around January 19, but was held up in customs while our resident permits were finalized.
Here it is being delivered to our Shanghai home on February 5, the last day before the Chinese New Year shutdown. I thought Jamie Valle would get a kick out of seeing her handwriting on the boxes in China! (You did a great job- it was very easy to find the kids' things.)

Not sure what the moving truck acrobatics were all about.

The Shanghai mover went to great lengths to get the shipment to us prior to the start of the Chinese New Year holiday when everything shut down, breaking all kinds of records. Hurrah for Asian Tigers! We sent the kids to sports camp at a neighboring compound for 2 days so we could put some concentrated focus on unpacking... and that's what the house looks like right now: unpacked.

After two months, we weren't quite sure what we had packed. It tells you a little about our experiences to date to list the things we found ourselves most excited to see:

• Lauren: white board calendar, huge bottles of Bumble and Bumble shampoo and conditioner (I had a very hard time at Carrefour figuring out which was shampoo and which conditioner even among the American brands) and more sweaters
• Eric: coffeemaker and earthquake putty (the latter useful for fixing all kinds of computer peripherals and electronics to the desk, and simply not findable in China).
• Allison: her stuffed panda bear
• Rebecca: her stuffed zebra.
• Henry: his Super Mario Galaxy strategy guide (Henry has more power stars than Eric... but just barely!)