Arrival of the boxes!

We didn't want to take much with us to Canada from Australia -  mainly our bikes due to the cost of replacing them.  It was cheap to send a couple of boxes with it, so we decided on two boxes and the two bikes.  With the benefit of hindsight, we did it in the wrong order - our boxes for Canada were taken away before we'd packed anything in the rest of the house.  The boxes also had lots of extra space as they were twice as big as we were expecting, so we filled it up with whatever we found at the time - unfortunately, we discovered once they'd gone and we packed up the rest of the house that there were a lot of other things that we should have packed instead (such as my uni textbooks and sleeping bag).

We posted them on the 30th of August, and they were delivered today - so 12 weeks time in transit.  Once the boxes made it Canada, there were surprisingly few difficulties - we were emailed some papers, and we needed to personally visit Canadian Customs with those papers plus one that was stamped when we entered the country.  We were expecting a few hours of messing around and being sent from government department to government department, but amazingly, we spoke to one person and it took 10 minutes to get the stamp we needed.  After that, it was just a matter of faxing the paper with the stamp to the delivery company, and two days later they were delivered!  And there was much rejoicing!

Two boxes...

... and two bikes!

The best part about getting boxes that you packed 3 months ago is that you have absolutely no idea what's in them - it's like Christmas, finding things that you had no idea you'd packed!

In an awesome coincidence, the boxes were delivered 20 minutes before we left to see the new Harry Potter movie, so I got to wear my Ravenclaw scarf to the movie! :D

In other news - on Tuesday we decided on the spur of the moment to take advantage of our unemployed state in our new location and booked a trip to New York next week.  So on Monday morning we'll be in New York City :)  We didn't realise when we booked it, but Thursday is American Thanksgiving, so we'll even be in New York for the big Thanksgiving Day Parade!  If anyone has any suggestions about what to do in NYC, let us know - we're currently compiling a list :)