As it turns out, it takes a long time to edit and ensure proper species identification on 1,200 reptile photos from the insanely humid, wildlife-rich jungles of Madagascar.
Also: that activity turns out to be wildly incompatible with mounting a major international move.
So in lieu of any photos to demonstrate, I'm happy to report that Madagascar was amazing.
Everything else — meaning the five weekdays we left ourselves for packing, loading our shipping container, cleaning out our apartment, and getting rid of all the stuff that didn't fit in the container — was amazing, too.
Though more in the "Wow, I was just run over by a UPS truck" sense of amazing than the "Wow, when can we go back and do that all over again?" sense of amazing.
We returned to Nijmegen late on Sunday night with two backpacks full of filthy hiking clothes, one damp tent, and a lifetime supply of vanilla beans from the east coast of Madagascar.
On Monday, we incinerated our laundry, including the pair of pants that John and I shared for a week in the jungle after Air Madagascar lost his luggage.
Me, once it became clear that *my* wardrobe was going to have to serve as *our* wardrobe for the better part of the trip:
Hey John, isn't it great that I always wear such non-girly clothes?
John: Uh...yes! It's awesome that you wear such non-girly clothes.
On Tuesday, we packed up the stuff that we needed to bring with us as luggage on the plane.
As I write this, our shipping container is either making its spectacular journey by boat across the North Atlantic, OR, it's sitting patiently on a dock in the fine city of Rotterdam, waiting to make its spectacular journey by boat across the North Atlantic.
Either way, we have a whole household's worth of stuff that we won't see for another 6 to 10 weeks.
So we needed to select 4 suitcases' worth of essential belongings for the two or three months in which we won't have all of our non-essential belongings.
The result?
I'll have to get back to you on how these choices are working out for us.
On Wednesday, a team of professional movers descended upon our apartment to wrap and pack everything at a speed that is still blowing my mind.
As an added bonus, the Dutch moving company used white cardboard to box and wrap all of our stuff, including the furniture.
By the end of the day, our apartment had a definite late-1950s insane asylum vibe.
Which, frankly, was a refreshing change from our everyday early-2010s insane asylum vibe.
