Packing, what a thrill! The airlines tell us that we are limited to a single checked bag that can weigh no more than 44 pounds. Well, what we want to tell them is that we are going out into the world for 6 months into many different climates, Travis has big shoes, and we are carrying half of a drug store with us containing every medication known to man and anything else we could possibly need so we can avoid buying skin whitening lotion rather than the sunscreen we thought we were purchasing, and yes, that does in fact exist.
You can guess that the airlines don't really care, so we have spent the last week in Colorado Springs packing, re-packing and containing our lives into one 44 pound bag. The week started by moving out of our apartment in Boulder to the home of Travis's parents in Colorado Springs where we packed a room full our possessions and bid them adieu for the next 6 months. We can only hope the mice don't find our box of cooking dry goods.
Next we began the arduous process of making a packing list of what is coming with us: hiking shoes, waking shoes, chacos, flip-flops, 2 pairs of shorts/dresses, 4 pairs pants, half-dozen shirts, jacket, week supply of underwear/socks, and a lot of laundry detergent seeing as we will be needing to wash these clothes a bunch. We are taking our sleeping bags, trekking poles, first aid kit, repair kit, laundry bag, travel journal, and a few other items we don't think we will be able to buy on the road. We have fully resigned ourselves to the notion that when April rolls around, the clothes we started out with will have stayed behind in various countries and we will have acquired a new wardrobe.
Also needing to fit in our now bulging bags are enough snacks to keep Victoria from getting grumpy on our way to Asia, and a few pounds of papers including copies upon copies of important documents. To help organize the papers we bought plastic envelopes for each country that includes things like our flight reservations, hotel bookings, and photocopied sections to guide books (because we would have nearly 44 lbs of just guide books alone if we brought all the books we have been highlighting the last several months). Although many of you will not be able to believe it, this was all Travis's doing, not Victoria's. We have also printed off several pages of google results for "wedding vows" so we don't get behind on the important business of wedding planning. For those that make it to the wedding, you will forgive us if our vows sound a bit foreign and odd. We probably wrote them in some corner of an airport highly jet-lagged and wishing for a cheeseburger to eat rather than lentils, AGAIN!
So here we are, on the eve before we leave the country on what may be the biggest adventure of our lives, hoping with all our might that we have at least a vague idea of what we got ourselves into and are ready to meet the challenges. We shall all find out together!
Next stop: Katmandu, Nepal (oh, and just a few hours of flying to get there)
T&V
