11 More Days...

We were very busy last week.  Lance and I finally sold our last household items.  Our dear friend, Sande, came down from La Crosse to purchase our area rug and silver lamp.   She was also kind enough to take 2 large pictures and some smaller items that we needed to unload.  Thanks Sande!  Now there are just a few odds and ends that need to be disposed of and we will be good to go.  Of course we also need to clean the apartment, but we are trying to do a little bit of that everyday as we slide into the final two weeks of our remaining time in Milwaukee.

We also began work on our residency visa.  Long ago we decided to hire Maite Duran of Gringo Visas to assist us in this matter.  She will help us obtain our visa before leaving the United States.  There are multiple documents that we need to have in place before mailing them all to her.  Once she receives them she will translate them to Spanish and/or do whatever else needs to be done.  When the visa is ready we will need to drive to Chicago to have our passports stamped at the Ecuadorian Consulate.  (At least that is what we think happens in Chicago, but we aren't entirely sure.)

Lance and I also finally started packing our storage lockers last week.  We gathered all the clothes that we didn't think we would need for our upcoming trips, folded them, and put them into space bags that my friend Tammy gave to us.  Space bags come in all different sizes and are used to store clothing items.  You hook up a vacuum cleaner to the bag and it removes all the air so that they shrink down to a smaller size.

This is how the clothes look before they are placed in the space bag.

Once they are packed inside the bag you carefully zipper it closed...making sure it is sealed tight.

Then, you attach the vacuum and remove all the air.  It's hard to tell by looking at this picture, but the clothes are considerably smaller with the air removed.  We can fit twice the amount in our suitcase using this method.

Everything we are taking will be packed into 3 large suitcases and 5 storage lockers.  We will also have 2 carry on suitcases.  The storage lockers look like this...

They have wheels on one end which allows us to roll them when they are tilted up.  My son Adam will have to bring us to the airport in his truck because they won't fit in the car.  Four pieces of luggage are included with our tickets.  We will have to pay $175.00 each for the four additional pieces.

It's all a lot of work, but we're sure it will be worth it in the end.