Saturday, November 29, 2008

2 Days til Stage

I got up at 7:15 this morning because my stomach was churning and I couldn't sleep. This is odd for me, as I have been accustomed to a 9:45 rising for the last few weeks.

Last night I called my mom and asked if she could come up to help me today. My friend is coming around 10 or 11 to help me with my bed and take it to my mom's place. Then she is going to follow me back because I need help. Mostly I just want her to clean my room/bathroom for the girl moving in. And maybe help me run some stuff over to Goodwill. And decide to bring or leave a few more things.

My bags are really pushing the limits. They recommend carrying 35 lbs. in my camping pack and it's definitely getting up to 50 lbs. I will probably try to leave it in the duffel until we get to Africa. I am going to be just under the airline limits on both bags, and way over PC's limits on both size and weight. I don't care! I've done my best to narrow it down and I just can't narrow down any more!

I am carrying on my usual pilot case type carry-on and it will have my stuff for staging (clothes, toiletries) and whatever food I can stuff in it. Then my backpack, which has all my books and paperwork, my laptop and my Alphasmart. It really may be too much stuff. But I just can't deal with trying to narrow it down more. I will just have to suffer through dragging it everywhere. Once I am at site I bet I will be glad to have everything.

So I have an insane amount of things to do today and I'm glad my mom is going to come help me. I'm supposed to have a little get-together tonight but I don't know if it will happen. I might feel better if I just got everything out of my apartment and finished that out, spent some time in Long Beach with Ricardo and Evangeline and slept at my mom's place. That way in the morning I can just deal with taking things to Goodwill and moving the keeper stuff into the guest room closet and have a leisurely last evening on the couch.

Ugh. I can't stop over-thinking. Any prospective volunteers reading this, don't underestimate how much time you need to prepare. Go hard, go early.

1 comment:

Jenna said...

what do you think is taking up the most room/weight? I've always heard RPCVs say pack once, and then cut everything by half and that's all you need. Haha.

You said start early with packing, you need it...reminded me that I read one guys PC blog, and he started packing at 2am his last night at home!!!!!! He was packing until the moment he left! Talk about crazy