Hal and I did two things on dates, besides eat: we’d try out sofas (I have no idea why we did this… we’d be out,
there’d be a furniture store and next thing you know we are sitting on
all the sofas.) And browse bookstores. We couldn’t walk out of a
bookstore without a stack of books. Last week in Naples, we spent $400 on discount books… That’s a lot of books. We had some catching up to do…
At our garage sale just before we ran away, people like us walked out with boxes of our books. We had so many books and just couldn’t move them all for a year abroad… It was very gratifying though: so many people lost so many books to the flood so our yard sale was perfect for all of us. At the end of the day, there were still seven bookshelves full in the living room, but the delightful Avi, who sublet our house, was fine with looking at our books. We would miss them in Costa Rica but, hey, it was only for a year….
When you live in a country where English is not the primary language, getting your hands on new books is a critical item. And, once they are not readily available, you start to crave books. We visited all the bookstores in the central valley, but they all are used-book stores, except for two. The used are almost exclusively novels. The new books are new novels. OK for me, but ol’ stick-in-the-mud-I-like-history-and-finance-and-politics Hal doesn’t read fiction except Stephanie Plum novels and Dean Koontz. We started to get very homesick for our books.
Discovering m-bags was a very big day for us. You can ship up to 66 lbs of books in an m-bag for $1/lb. So 30lbs of books for $30. That same 30lbs in a box would be $46. Airmail would be $111. M-bags were a Godsend. Once we knew about m-bags, we started to dream of having our books in Costa Rica. And now we could order from Amazon with wild abandon like in the old days, deliver to my mom or Hal’s brother. Once they had an m-bag full, they’d ship it off and 8 weeks later, voila! NEW BOOKS!!!
As of Monday, that is all over. Because the USPS – I would say "in its infinite wisdom" but not – is doing away with m-bags as of Monday. This Monday. 5/14/07. In fact, they are doing away with ALL international ground shipping. Only airmail from now on. No m-bags. No ground. Only airmail. This is very, very, very sad news for expats.
I called UPS on a whim to see what they would charge to deliver a 30lb box to Costa Rica from Key West. Are you sitting down? $400 and something. I’m thinking UPS is out.
So for the past two days, I’ve been packing and shipping m-bags. Yesterday, I shipped five 40lb m-bags. This morning I shipped five more. Then I packed up two 70lb and one 40lb suitcases with photos to take back to Costa Rica. Photos of my boys as babies – ohmygod. They were so cute. And our wedding photos. My high school yearbook. Hal’s baby pictures. I WAS skinny once. And young. But I am NOT young anymore and I am whipped. It’s 7pm here and I’m trying to stay awake. My last two nights in Key West and I may not be able to move from in front of the TV. That’s old.
But we will have our books in Costa Rica. Hal is giddy, I can’t wait to see them around the house. We’ll have to just load up when we visit since we can’t get them there cheaply. Up to now, when friends said, "We are coming down. Can we bring you anything?" I’ve always said no… From now on, I’m saying, "Yes!!! How many extra pounds can you carry?"
The discontinuance of M-Bags by the USPS (Unusually Stupid Postal Schmucks) is no less than cruel and unusual punishment for the expat reader. Where do they get these ideas, one wonders… Whatever happened to the concept of the public servant actually serving the public? And the sadder part is that we’re unlikely to hear an outcry loud/large enough to overturn this decision in the near future.
Maybe we should all write our elected officials. Oh yeah… They’re public officials, too. Rats!
Cheers! anyway…
Paul
==
UPS is expensive and doesn’t ship to too many international cities from the states. However, FedEx is much worse than UPS or the USPS and much more expensive than both. I know this from experience with all three. I’ve lived in many corners of the world and just gave up sending or getting anything from the states.
Mike in Ufa, Russia
Indeed, a sad day!!! I was counting on m-bags to get my book fix in CR. Like you, it will now be the good will of friends to bring down massive quantities of books. That’s a lot to ask – I have shlepped books to CR for friends, and they are heavy!
Jim
Hi Jim, I just arrived back from the states with 3 bags: one at 50lbs (included in the ticket), one at 70lbs so overweight ($10 for the 2nd bag and $25 for overweight) and one extra bag at the limit of 50lbs. So $160 for 200lbs of stuff… Way cheaper than USPS. Even if the third bag is just books, 50lbs is a lot of books, especially paperbacks. It’s a lot of hardbacks, in fact. This will have to do until the USPS or someone takes up the slack here!
A very sad day- I sent M bags when we first moved……not knowing it’d be the last time ;(
Darn, darn, darn.
Very good posts on your list of “to gets” and packing for the plane from the States and the M-bags. I totally get it.
Our problem is our rental here- not enough room for our boxes and boxes of books that we have in storage with our tools too- in Esparza. And where we live, on the Pacific northwes coast of Guanacaste, CR, we also need an A/C room/office or our books would die during the rainy season. So they are sitting in storage, almost 2 years now…We visit the storage unit like a store, go shopping there. But it is weird (and too “US” style) to keep the storage unit rental up for too long- didn’t we also move here to live more simply?
But I get so emotional when Rick, my husband, raises the subject of “dealing with” the storage unit, aka MY books, that I can’t be reasoned with. Intellectually, I get we need to talk about it, I say that myself. But when we start to talk about it, I say, “I’m not ready yet.” I am totally serious about this. We may need a 3rd party mediator before the third year of storage gets underway. I did make progress recently. I admitted that to donate the books to our local library and Rick’s tools to people here, I would feel embarassed! Such “overkill, US excess”. Our tiny local library would literally need to build an extra room for our books. We’re talking 10 bookshelves’ worth…So that’s progress, I’m identifying obstacles to resolving our little issue.
STUFF, what an interesting problem to have, huh?
thanks again for a great post for expats!
-Heidi