Thanks for sharing your experience. A year is a very long time..I am also curious about the pickup options and address.
My partner will be updating their address to have mail sent to a family member’s address in the US, but we will also be living in a country that has a US embassy easily accessible.
My partner is Mexican, so as you can imagine, they almost always have awful experiences with immigration in the US.
Yes, a year is a long time but evidence of having applied for a reentry permit in the form of a receipt notice is usually enough to reenter the U.S. without issue even with absences of more than 6 months.