The final countdown
Today our landlord will come to visit after we have our Covid tests done. It was a bit of a pain to get that arranged with him because the testing was actually going to happen between 13.30 and 21.00 today. Thankfully, we won't have to sit inside from 2 to 9 after all, they sent us a 1,5 hours time frame yesterday in which they will arrive for the testing. That's great because it will make our day a lot smoother now that we decided to buy another big suitcase after all. This was not planned, we hoped it wasn't needed either, but it seems like we will make it harder on ourselves if we don't.
I considered the pain of traveling with this much luggage and not buying one extra big suitcase, but then I realized our "taxi" will be a friend with a station wagon and from the first hotel to the airport, it's a shuttle bus (only a few minutes). Once in Malaga, we will also take a taxi to the hotel and most likely from the hotel to the bus station the next day too. Yes, those taxi drives will be expensive probably but anything for comfort to be honest. We've had our fair share of traveling with a lot of luggage (and a baby, stroller, etc) by bus already, this time we will just pay for comfort. The whole carrying around your life in several suitcases thing (including your office setting lol) is already uncomfortable enough as we have to hop from temporary accommodation to temporary accommodation the first month, that I feel we should give ourselves at least some comfort where possible.
The current status
It will give you a slightly wrong idea though as the items are just thrown on the suitcases without considering using a vacuum bag or anything, so the actual volume will look less big once we're done sorting what goes where. The only thing that we knew for sure was one trolley was going to carry most paperwork and some other heavy items we take, to hopefully get it close to 10kg and part of the check-in luggage, one trolley will be our carry-on luggage including everything we want to have close to us as well as a fresh set of clothes for in the hotels and one suitcase will be the one carrying only clothes plus the computer screens of our office setting so that they will not risk being damaged as there are only clothes in the suitcase.
As you can see above, we still have plenty of packing to do, lol. The right top picture shows our 2 big and 2 trolley suitcases, while on the top right you can see the third trolley we're taking. This was supposed to be enough but we're going to get another big suitcase later today after we had our Covid tests done. Why? There are simply too many items that haven't sold and while I was fed up selling, I also got fed up throwing things out for free. We noticed that the one extra suitcase would solve the issue, and even though it's a slight discomfort traveling with one extra, it seems that we're going for that option anyway. We're not sure yet if we replace one of the small trolleys, probably we will so we still have 5 suitcases instead of 6. Easier traveling, lol.
The bottom images show you the amount of paperwork I yet have to sort, except for the purple binder as that's paperwork sorted that we have to take with us, but thankfully, that's almost done. Even though we will have some more space for packing stuff later, I really want to remove as much extra weight as possible.
There's one box left as you can see, piled up with items that we won't take so this has to be given away, or put outside so strangers will take it for free. I tried giving those things away many times, without result and most things aren't suitable for our friends or landlord so that box has to be emptied later today making our hallway free of clutter again. It may seem like mission impossible for today but I feel calm and it will be all fine, we will first get rid of what needs to go (unless we want to ask our landlord if he wants it first) and then empty spaces will appear again.
Work
By the time of writing this, I got most of my work for today and the next two days planned ahead, I have to finalize a few things later today, but I'm not worried about getting that done today. I deliberately choose not to deal with any work stuff until at least Monday evening when we're in the first hotel, but I rather plan everything until Tuesday in case I'm too tired and just don't want to deal with work stuff during the travel days. If I will work, I will plan a few days ahead again because I know that once we land at our final destination, I will start enjoying our surroundings for the rest of the week as my boyfriend is also free from work. My work will be done in the early mornings or later evenings probably, and the rest of the time, I will enjoy it without a screen in front of me.
The biggest concern today: the Covid tests
I know when you are self-isolated it's quite impossible to have them turn out positive but then this voice inside my head reminds me about the false positives that have appeared over the year and I get slightly stressed and think "what if". Our tickets are non-refundable as I wanted to save ourselves the money for a trip we weren't going to move forward anyway, hence the stupid self-isolating. I will be happy when this day is over and we have received the green light in our mailbox that we have tested negative and are allowed to fly. It's one of these things that I can't control myself and makes me a bit anxious until I have the final verdict, lol.
Either way, the countdown is real and things will move quickly from now on.
Thanks for reading and have a great Sunday ahead!
Previous parts of The Expat Diaries
- The sound of an almost empty home
- Narrowing down our life to 5 suitcases
- When the universe aligns everything perfectly
- Catching up and saying goodbyes
- We're closing the kindergarten chapter sooner than expected
- Finding a place to live in Spain
- The countdown is real - The last times in Budapest
- Our life in 6 suitcases - sorting, selling & giving away our belongings
- Moving back to Spain very soon!
Credits
- The header image is my personal design made in Canva Pro I don't give permission to use any of my designs unless I've given permission directly.
- The text divider is my own design, created with Canva Pro with the usage of images from Canva Pro or in other cases my own images. The text divider designs are also for my own use only, unless I've given you direct permission to use them.
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