although i tried living simply, after two years of living in korea i'd accumulated a lot of stuff. so when it came time to return to america, i had to figure out what to do with everything. i went through it all and narrowed it down, but i still had quite a lot of things that i wanted to bring with me. so i decided to ship a bunch of boxes over to california.

i was very fortunate that my saintly friend yejee agree to help me with all the shipping arrangements. she called an 아저씨 (ajeossi, a middle aged man) and arranged to have him carry my boxes from my apartment to the nearest post office, and all for only ₩40,000 ($40). once at the post office, it took about an hour and a half to get all the boxes processed and ready to ship. they stressed the fact that the boxes would literally get thrown around so some fragile things had to be repacked in styrofoam to prevent them from breaking. i was a little worried with how much it would cost to ship nine heavy boxes halfway around the world, but it came out to just about ₩300,000 ($300), which i thought was reasonable. finally all the boxes were processed and paid for and they were on their way. i shipped everything by boat since it was the cheapest and there wasn't anything that i needed urgently once i got to the states. but i was surprised when they informed me that the estimated arrival time would be two to four months!

tagged: boxes bulgogi korea moving post office 불고기