There is a learning curve for sure. With everything. Except that the learning curve with joining the foreign service is larger than anything I've ever experienced! Or maybe it's just that the learning has to be done in a short period of time. I don't know. Normally, FSOs and their families come to D.C. for their first time or come back to D.C. from post, expecting to have at least nine months of language training here. We will have only 3.5 months here to get our lives in order and figure everything out because Briant already speaks Portuguese. The packout, or should I say packouts, are one of those things that I am learning by doing. And when I say doing, that means by making "mistakes," or wishing that I had known more before I made decisions.
For example, with our UAB packout (Unaccompanied Air Baggage), we are allowed 800 lbs of stuff for our family size. Apparently, most people pack this out first, before the things that go on the "slow boat," (HHE, or Household Effects), in case they go overweight. If you are overweight, then you can hold on to those things and pack them in your HHE. Well, I didn't know this. So I stressed about how much our things were going to weigh for the HHE and the consumables packout that was a few weeks ago, and then I really stressed about sticking to the 800 lb. limit for the UAB. I found out that we were about 350 lbs underweight on our HHE, so I was feeling hopeful. They don't bring scales to weigh your HHE, so it's really just luck if it all works out because you have no idea what all of your things weigh, especially after they add the weight of boxes and packing material. I did spend a few weeks trying to find a good, accurate scale that could weigh ounces on up to hundreds of pounds, which I did ultimately find, thanks to my friend Melissa. So I had a general idea, but nothing concrete.
Anyway, the day of the UAB packout was here and I actually felt really good about the weight of our things. I thought that we would be under for sure. Then the packer shows up and tells me that they have to use special heavy duty boxes that weigh 20 lbs. each. And after they box everything up, they have to wrap each box in waterproof paper and put steel bands around them. That adds another 5 lbs. to each box. Long story short, we got down to the last box and we were going to be overweight. I had to leave piles of books, a crockpot, blender, and other miscellaneous things. With 150 lbs going to packing materials alone, there was no way we were going to meet the 800 lb. limit. So the packer left with the boxes meeting the weight limits, and me with more work now in trying to figure out how to get the rest of our stuff to Angola (or maybe we will make some good donations). On top of that, I got an email after the weekend, saying that we were 30 lbs. over our limit (another thing learned--don't trust the scales of the packers)! They told us that our boxes would not be shipped until we paid the $110 for the U.S. fees, and that they would let us know what the fees would be in Angola for being over the limit. I didn't even wait around to find out what that was. I drove to the warehouse where our boxes were, and got help to open one of them to lessen the weight. I pulled out all of the kids' church clothes, which brought the weight down perfectly. My day was shot. But at least I had a chance to remedy the situation. At this point, I've half-jokingly told Briant that I really don't care if anything shows up in Angola. :) Most of our things have been boxed up for months now, and we seem to be living fine without all of it. Sure, it will be nice to be surrounded by our library of 50 boxes of books. But I'm confident that going to Angola will teach us that "less is more."
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