Adrenaline and butterflies have been my constant companions for the last few weeks.
I wake early every morning and instantly I’m up. No alarm clock needed and no sleeping in these days. Instantly my brain starts working and the blood starts pumping and the butterflies of excitement and anxiety start stirring up my stomach. Many times, they all mix together into nausea.
I’m going to attempt to blog every day for the next week or so, here and on the other side. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to move overseas? Well, here’s my diary.
We are now at my parents’ house until we leave. Today, we took over their living room. Actually, it’s more like we threw up all over their living room. We unloaded every single thing that we want to take to Tanzania, in an attempt to get it organized for packing.
Goal: Fit all of this into 10 pieces of luggage.
After the butterflies in my stomach took a few nose dives, I took a few deep breaths and dug in.
Packing for plane travel is nothing like packing for a normal move. In normal moves, you pack according to the room in the house, carefully labeling each box.
Packing for plane travel is all about weight and space. Each luggage piece has to be a certain size and weigh no more than 50 pounds. It’s like a giant game of Tetris. There’s no “kitchen” or “bedroom” box here. Everything is mixed up according to how it fits in the box. For example, don’t pack a water bottle until you’ve filled up every inch of space inside it.
Get out the bathroom scale and keep handing tubs to your long-suffering husband so that you can check the weight. Rearrange. Add more. Take more out. Repeat.
This is where I spent the entire day.
Of course, between Gil and I, there was plenty of, What were we thinking when we bought this? How on earth could we have this much stuff? And many thoughts of wanting to set it all on fire.
Tonight my aunt and uncle came over for dinner and brought extremely cool bubbles. Thankfully, they don’t need to be packed.
