House Swap

With our departure date drawing ever nearer I realized it was time to start thinking seriously about the practical side of moving home. We came to Shanghai with only the contents of four suitcases to start our home here, and in theory we will be leaving with just the four suitcases again. Dust to dust and such.

Unlike most overseas teaching gigs, Joel's didn't come with a furnished apartment- which means we furnished it ourselves on arrival. That's fine and all, but it also means that when we leave we have to figure out what to do with everything that doesn't fit into those suitcases. Not just the couches and the bed but our lamps, our conversation piece of a refrigerator, our dishes, everything.

I'd begun ameliorating myself with the idea of parting with all these things we'd designed and accumulated. I started putting together an Exit Strategy complete with a time line of what things to sell when and at what cost when an unexpected email arrived.

The email was from another foreigner living in our complex who asked us, quite frankly, if we would be comfortable playing musical chairs with our furniture-only without the music and the getting out if you run out of chairs-so nothing like that really. The proposal was that we start selling our furniture and as each piece sold- a couch for example, they would replace with a couch from their home until eventually all their furniture was moved into our apartment for the next tenants.

It was a great proposal. I felt suddenly much more secure about our situation. With the freedom to sell things at our leisure we could get ahead of the end of the year move-out rush. This happy non-stressed feeling stayed with me for about a week, until we found out that there had been a change in plans and instead of moving their things in eventually they needed to move them by the end of the week.

Which week? Next week. Oh my. Thankfully almost everything of ours has sold lickety-split (I had to define that term to some rather incredulous first graders this week, so I feel the need to justify its existence by using it in a sentence) so it's out with the old in with the new-which in this case is actually true in reverse. Selling the new to make way for the old. Bygones.

Wish us luck!