Two weeks after meeting with the Transportation office, all of our applications have been received and dates tentatively set. Our first moving company contacted me yesterday to confirm a pickup date of July 28th for the stuff going into storage. He took a brief description of the large items that would be going into storage and gave me a phone number to call between 8:00-8:15am the morning of the 28th to find out what time to expect the movers.

If all goes well we'll have the 3 sets of movers on the 26th, 27th, and 28th respectively, and then we'll have a few days to clean the empty place before heading out!

I just looked over at my countdown. 61 days until we fly? That's only 2 months!!!!

Alex, Cade and Mommy are all scheduled for physicals before we head out. Now to make the dentist appointments...

In order to leave one place and get to another, a military member must out-process and in-process. Neither of the said processes are very fun but the must happen. The joy of out processing for Dan is that he knows his 'last' day of work. He begins out processing on July 15th. He will have a departure luncheon on either the 14th or 16th at a restaurant of our choosing. That means July 15th-29th are all days that are spent doing paperwork and helping get ready to move, and aren't charged leave. Dan is then taking leave from the 30th-21st of August. Any days that we're on a plane aren't charged leave either.

We still haven't decided whether we're going to fly from Norfolk to Seattle, or try and get his orders changed, and drive all the way to Seattle.

Oh! We finally have our passports AND visas. We can now travel officially :)

It looks as though we'll be able to count the piano as professional equipment, meaning it won't be counted towards our 4,500 lbs! Yay!

Here is our official flight from Seattle to Korea.

We are to arrive at the airport at 10:35pm on the 16th. Our flight leaves at 1:55am on the 17th, and we arrive in Osan, Korea at 11:30am on the 18th-- korea time. There are several stops.

Seattle to Anchorage 1:55- 4:10 (lose 1 hour)
Anchorage to Yokota, Japan 6:30-7:00 (lose 15 hours)
Japan to Osan, Korea 9:20-11:30


So if I've done the math right, with a flight leaving at 1:55am (pacific time), when we land our bodies will feel like it is 7:30pm the same day. That is 17 1/2 hours of travel. When adjusting to Korea time we will practically lose that whole night since we arrive at nearly noon Korea time. And Seoul is still 50 miles from the airport. Ack! I think we'll need all of your prayers that day!

We will be flying from Seattle to Korea on August 16th. I'll update when I know the times of the flight!

One of the many reasons I'm doing this Korea specific blog is because someone may be able to use it as a resource when they have to move overseas. We can't be the first family to move from the United States to Korea, but there isn't a wealth of information about how to do all this. I knew I would learn things through the process that could help someone else.

So did you know that the shipment of your personal belongings is split up? There are three types.

Unaccompanied baggage: These are items you'd like sooner. It 'only' takes 45 days to receive this shipment of things like clothes, kitchen items, toys, but no furniture.

Household goods: That's pretty much everything else. This takes 72 days. We can take canned goods and spices, just no liquids like cleaners or sauces.

Non-temp storage: Since we are only allowed 50% of our weight allowance, a lot of our stuff will be going into storage. The government works with a commercial storage unit. Our stuff will be held here in Norfolk for the 3 years we are overseas and will be moved to our next duty station when that time comes.

Now did you know that we would have 3 separate sets of movers? One day for unaccompanied baggage, one day for household goods, and one day for non-temp storage? Yup, it's true. We will have 3 companies coming July 26, 27, and 28th (as long as the movers have openings for the days we have requested).

Did you know that when booking your flights you have to provide a ten day window? We wanted to arrive in Korea on August 15th, so we might fly out on August 5th-14th. It kinda puts a damper on what we were hoping to do. We may know our flight as soon as tomorrow and then we can make more permanent plans. If indeed we are flying out on August 5th then we will try and have the movers come sooner. We wanted to have about two weeks between movers coming and flying out so that we could take some leave and visit more friends and family.

We also learned that we will be flying out of Seattle into Korea. There is a possibility that we may be able to drive out to Seattle, ship our car and fly out from there, and even be reimbursed for our travel out there.

So if I seem a little spacey and not quite in the routine of things, it's because there's lots of information flowing through my brain right now. We get the next few weeks that are without friends or family visiting to purge through our belongings, donate, sort and label. Sounds like fun!