I had been in touch with several people from Dolphin. The first was the Israeli we met at the aliyah fair, whose name was Sharon. The second was Moti, the guy who came to our apartment to do the estimate. The third was Randy, some guy with a southern accent who would call me from their Israel office and try to convince me to go with them. I ended up signing through Randy, but not before I asked for a discount. Intead of the proposed $1800 for 250 cubic feet and $5.25 for every cubic foot afterwards, he gave me $1900 for 300 cubic feet and $5.25 for every cubic foot afterwards, which saved us about $150.
Randy told me that we could have our pickup on the day we wanted, Sunday Aug 22. He also said that the truck would have markings inside so that we could we could watch the movers pack up our boxes in real time and see how much volume it took up. This was good news for us, because we wanted to be able to make last minute decisions - perhaps we would decide not to pack an item that pushed the volume too high.
Keep in mind, though, that the people who actually come and pack up your stuff are not Dolphin, but rather someone contracted out by Dolphin. This means that Dolphin can promise you whatever it wants, but in reality it's some other guy doing the work.
Now came the really hard part - deciding which stuff to take to Israel, and which stuff not to take. And, perhaps more importantly, what to DO with all the stuff we weren't taking to Israel.
Rachel and I had already discussed and agreed on the major items. We were taking the sofa, and our (collapsable) wooden table and its chairs. We weren't taking lamps and other electrical appliaces. But, as in all apartments, the important stuff is the "stuff" - all the random things you couldn't name off the top of your head and don't realize you own... until you move.
Now, if neither money nor apartment size in Israel are a problem for you, I recommend just letting the movers pack it all up. But we didn't want to spend too much money, and we didn't know how big our apartment in Israel would be.
And so, over the course of the week leading up to our moving date, we started going through our apartment room by room, sorting things. We asked Dolphin for moving boxes in advance, and they dropped them off promptly (again, it helped that we lived a few minutes away from their warehouse). We set up these boxes in the living room. Things that were to be brought to Israel went in the boxes - not carefully packed, but just put in there for sorting purposes. Things that were to remain in the US were piled up; and that pile grew higher each day. Some of that stuff we sold, some of it we gave away, and some of it we stuffed into my parents' car which Ashy drove out on the moving day (thanks Ashy!). The rest of it we stuffed into our Focus and drove down to Philly after the move.
As we went through this process, we had to constantly decide whether or not to bring a certain item to Israel. I can't say that we followed any hard-and-fast rule of thumb, but things that didn't make the cut included redundant wedding gifts (like extra challah boards and havdalah sets), 120 volt appliances, and large furniture that wasn't important (like an old desk and a desk chair). We brought all our dishes and kitchenware. We brought all our books; when you pay for volume instead of weight, books are a bargain. We brought our sofa, beds, a collapsible table, chairs, a folding table, three framed items (including Rachel's ketuba), and a stained-glass work that we made ourselves. In the end, everything survived the move.
Here's how it went down Sunday morning:
We were expecting the moving guys some time in the morning. We thought there might be 3 or 4 of them. I ran out to Dunkin Donuts and bought a dozen doughnuts and a box of coffee. When I returned, the guys had already arrived and the whirlwind of packing had begun. There were only two of them, one big burly guy with a Russian accent, and his helper, a little guy who only spoke Spanish. I offered them the doughnuts and coffee, but the big guy told me he was fasting. Later, I asked him why and he gave me an incredelous look and said "Ramadan!" Oh. Well at least the little guy got to eat them.
We had wanted to watch them very closely - see how they are packing things, make sure they are utilizing the volume as best as possible, etc. But this didn't really happen. We would invariably have to run down to the car or somewhere else, and they were just moving too fast anyway. We had no chance of really offering any input, but in the end they really did know best. Rachel wanted to watch them wrap up our good china, and she may have watched some of it, but at the end of the day, we put our trust in them and it worked out ok.
We did commit one oversight. All of our aliyah related documents, such as our birth certificates, our "apostille" copy of our marriage license, letters proving we were Jewish, etc. all got packed away in boxes. We meant to separate them out and have them on our person for aliyah, but we forgot. In the end, we were lucky and we didn't need them in the airport, but the moral of the story is to make sure you set aside the things you don't want them to pack up. Leave the packing to them, don't try to help out.
It turned out that the part about them having measurements in the truck was not true. So we weren't able to make any last minute decisions about what we wanted to take or not take. The main guy told us that he thought we were somewhere between 300 and 350, which wasn't too far off from what we were expecting.
And that was it. We tipped them, and they drove off. We packed up the Focus, and left Elizabeth behind.
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