Packing is Painful

Well. Packing my apartment was difficult. Moving Day was stressful, although I had the help of lots of friends. (Thank you!) Driving the U-Haul was easier than I expected, and returning it wasn't too bad either; even though I was over the allowed mileage, they didn't charge me for it.

Packing for the Peace Corps was tough.

So some of you saw my two huge (and heavy) boxes, plus several bags of stuff I wanted to take with me. There were lots of books--no surprise to anyone who knows me--and things I'd been told would be useful, like a can opener and an oven thermometer. I had gifts to give to my host families, and clothes and shoes and blank journals and hundreds of other things I wanted to take "if there was room."

There was no room.

I'm glad my mom has a pretty accurate scale for her business. I packed up each of my two allowed bags, set them in turn on the scale, and then made the tough decisions about what had to come out to push the weight a smidge under 50 pounds. I packed up my backpack until I was afraid the straps would give out, loaded my purse until it was about bursting, and surveyed the carnage of my parents' living room.

There was stuff everywhere. Books and gifts and lotions and miscellaneous odds and ends (such as a can opener and an oven thermometer), plus trash and clothes that are not coming with me and empty boxes that need to be packed away. It was really quite stunningly messy, and I actually left it that way for my parents to deal with because we had to leave early to get to Phoenix by 4:00 on Friday, when the luggage store closed for the weekend. Why was that so important, you ask? Because somehow I'd managed to lose the shoulder strap for my giant black duffel bag, and that bag is next to impossible to manage without the strap.

I meant to make a nice list of everything I'm taking with me, but to be honest I don't have any idea what finally made the cut and what didn't. I guess it will be a bit of a surprise. I'll let you all know when I get there, because there is no way I'm going to unpack these bags before I get to Ukraine.

I am right now sitting in my hotel room in Washington, DC. Registration starts at 1:00 today, so I have a few hours to write this up and find a computer where I can upload it. Someone told me the hotel has a couple of computers--they charge $0.25 a minute to use them. They also charge to make phone calls to 1-800 numbers. Not a small charge, either. It's $1.00 for the first 30 minutes, and then $0.10 a minute after that. So if I don't call you even though I said I would, it's not because I don't love you. It's just because I haven't figured out where the pay phones are yet.

Last night about 10 of the volunteers (the Early Arrivals, or those of us flying in from the West coast, who couldn't get early enough flights to fly in by 1:00 tomorrow) met up in the lounge. This is a good group of people--no surprise there. We were all glad to find out we've been going through the same things. Of course the email list was great, but there's nothing like face-to-face.

So...I'm doing good, and looking forward to everything that's coming in the next week. And in the next two years. It's going to be grand!