I emailed my friend Louise last week when she texted me asking me how I was doing. I had to reply in an email back because it was too hard to summarize how I was doing in a text. I laughed though when she said that she had to read my email twice. I looked back at the email, and sure enough, I had a hard time swallowing all of it myself! I felt bad because it really was a lot of information and felt overwhelming. But this is my life right now! It's crazy! I'll spare all of the details. But I did want to write about "consumables."
We're allowed 2500 lbs of consumables to take with us to Angola to offset the high cost of food in Luanda, as well as to help our supply of food that might be difficult to find over there. I'm packing 1500 lbs of it now, and then next summer when we come back to the states for the summer, I'll ship off the last 1000 lbs.
The focus of the consumables should be liquids, because we aren't going to be able to get liquids through the pouch. So spaghetti sauce and other sauces, and even peanut butter is considered to be a liquid. Medicines, cleaning supplies, sun screen, etc. The hard part of this was to think about what we use and in what quantity we use it. How much peanut butter should I take? How many cans of food should I take? And once you get thinking about it, the list of liquid products you depend on, begins to grow. These pics will show some of what I decided we would want to have with us in Angola. I started at Costco. I wish we could have taken pictures of the looks on the faces of the people behind and around us in line!!! I don't even think the pics show the quantity of stuff we had because a lot of it is hidden underneath! It came out to $1250!
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| My seriously wonderful friend Melissa who is off to Mauritania (Africa) herself a few weeks before we leave. She has experienced the consumables process already, so she has been "coaching" me. Actually, she's been teaching me everything about everything ever since I got here. The packout, what to pack and where, buying cars, insurance, banking, how to ship things to us abroad, schools and homeschooling, the Marine ball, raising kids abroad, how things work at the embassy, etc. The list goes on and on. You name it, she has been an incredible resource for me. I am a never ending pit of questions, and she has been a good friend to always be willing to answer my questions!!! |
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| The toilet paper can be shipped in, but I wanted to have some with us to get us started. And some of it, like the pumpkin, will have to be carried with us so we can have it in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The floor mats I bought because we will have all tile floors there, so my feet will appreciate a soft mat under them while doing dishes. Beach towels because we will be spending a lot of time at the beach according to other embassy families that we've talked to, and the kids will have a pool at their school where they have swimming class. |
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| We had several people ask us as we were loading if we were going to be able to fit everything in the car. One guy even told us to be careful not to let the cart hit his car. :) Luckily Briant showed up about the same time as I started to unload the car, so he could help me. We stacked everything up in Thomas' room. |
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Two more trips to Walmart (I think we're up to $2,000 now--
I hope this shipment of stuff doesn't get lost!):
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| Shampoo and conditioner, first aid supplies, over the counter meds, toothpaste, liquid soaps, cleaners, etc. |
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