When we were looking to move here, one of the choices that we had to make was whether our house here would be furnished or not. We had pretty much made up our minds on furnished before we even came to look at houses, as we did not want to ship the contents of our house here for just one year. I can’t imagine the work that would take, the wait for shipping, and the potential customs headaches. No thanks.

We wavered a bit when we learned exactly what a fully furnished rental home included in Bangalore. It would appear that the minimum that needs to be provided is your appliances and curtain rods. This does not match my definition of fully furnished in any way. I wouldn’t expect the nicest of furnishings, but I expect something. We were lucky in the end, and found a place that had the basics: beds and a table to eat on, as well as some accent pieces and patio furniture. We decided that we were willing to live in a sparsely furnished house, and only but what we really needed.

I knew that we were pretty much setting up a house from scratch, and tried to plan accordingly. I made lists of all of the things that I thought we needed and either through stuff in the suitcase, packed for the shipment, or planned on buying here. I forgot some things and didn’t plan for others, but all in all I was pretty pleased with myself. Then we arrived, and I started noting some things that I likely should have put in the suitcase. Things that I have years supply of in the shipment that is not yet here. Like a bottle of contact lens solution that actually had liquid in it, at least one of my cookbooks for when I am stumped for dinner because I can’t find things in the various grocery stores, more than one ziploc bag, so I don’t have to keep reusing bread bags and other sacs that just aren’t up to the task, all of the sunscreen (it’s surprisingly hard to find here), and the toys. Why did we not include any actual toys in the stuff that we carried with us?! Plenty of markers and books, but no toys. I finally broke down and bought a couple, much to the lils delight.

Even with these little glitches, I still felt pretty good. Then we got an email that let us know that our shipment had left North America later than we thought it should would have. This meant that it definitely wasn’t going to arrive before Willy’s birthday, and his gifts were in it. we knew there was only a remote chance, but it still disappointed me to have nothing but homemade cards for him. Then came a second email, letting us know that we weren’t going to get our shipment on this past Friday, as they had failed to account for Diwali when scheduling our delivery. Diwali is a pretty big deal around here, and they forgot about it. This pushed our delivery to next Wednesday (and we all assume that they are taking the state holiday on Tuesday into account). Wednesday is two days after Hallowe’en. The lils costumes are in the shipment.

We broke it to them at dinner tonight, when they were talking about how we were going to celebrate Hallowe’en in a place that doesn’t really celebrate Hallowe’en. Woo was crushed and upset, which upset Goose. He couldn’t figure out how this happened. I know it isn’t a big deal, and we can do other costumes, but these are the ones they LOVE, that they play with all the time at home. We talked them through it, and made plans for a little trick-or-treating when the stuff does get here, and they were OK with it. I still feel that I should have known better.