Moving abroad was a fairly straightforward procedure for me, as far as the actual “moving” was concerned. I transported myself and one reasonably massive suitcase by plane, obviously, but when you go to another country to stay one suitcase is usually not enough.

Fortunately, I didn’t have too many possessions I absolutely needed to take along with me, so everything I own ended up fitting neatly in just four cardboard boxes. About 60% of said boxes was filled with shoes, which definitely says something about my priorities in life. Ahem.

I arranged for a cargo company to transport my boxes for me by air (which is apparently cheaper than by ship if your freight is small; prospective emigrants take note!) and they would be delivered safe and sound to Beirut airport in only a few days. I’d get a phone call with details on picking them up as soon as they got through customs.

In my European naivety, I expected the pick-up place to be a quaint little office somewhere on the airport. Maybe staffed by a friendly, elderly man who would take twenty minutes just trying to spell my name correctly (even my boyfriend gets it wrong, to be honest) and then get out a cute little cart to put my boxes on. Maybe.

In reality, we arrived at an overcrowded parking lot where we ended up driving around in circles looking for a spot for at least fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, my boyfriend was ever so gently trying to convince me to stay in the car while he picked up my shipping, because the dock (because it was a dock, yes) would be full of… uncivilized people, and I was wearing a relatively short dress.

Of course, being my free-spirited, rebellious, stubborn self, I was having none of it. I would damn well walk into that dock and be perfectly able to ignore any sort of cavemanesque leering. It was MY shipment, MY passport was needed to pick it up, I wasn’t going to wait behind like a little girl…

…until the guy who told my boyfriend where to park also mentioned to him that it would really be a bad idea for me to come inside with him. With an almost victorious ahaha-I-told-you-so look on his face, he got out of the car and said “I love you, get used to the country, I’ll be right back”.

I scowled, I crossed my arms, I muttered and I growled but I handed over my passport and waited.

As I was waiting, a man who just walked out of the dock with his shipment told me he had been there since seven in the morning, and it was around eleven at this point. The wait time was terrible, the dock was extremely hot, dirty and uncomfortable. My boyfriend is a bit of a cleanfreak (I love you honey) so I immediately felt bad for making him do all this for me.

Yet, a mere ten minutes later he walks up to the car, accompanied by some guy who worked there and looked like he had just found his new best friend. My boxes were nowhere to be seen. As he got into the car, I told him about the other guy who had waited for four hours and if he’d just decided the wait was too long?

“No, the other guy obviously didn’t know how to bribe.”

“But where are my boxes?”

“They need to finish some paperwork so this guy is delivering them to wherever we want him to. Let’s go have some coffee.”

I think I can get used to this country after all.