And So It Begins....

In less than 2 days, I will be on my way to Philly for staging.  There I will meet the other 40 volunteers that will be going over to Macedonia with me.  After a day in Philly we will drive to New York where we will leave from JFK at 5:50pm Saturday night (US time).  From there it is just a hop, skip, and a jump over the Atlantic Ocean to our first stop, Vienna, Austria.  There we board the final plane which will take all of the extremely tired volunteers to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. Its not over yet........once we get off the plane, hoping that all of our luggage has arrived with us, we will travel about 30 minutes outside of the capital to a city called Kumanovo.   

Now I know the plan, the thing is trying to pack everything that I will need for the next 2 years into 2 rolling suitcases and a carry-on.........possible?

Surprising enough it actually is possible. On Tuesday, mom got it in her head that she wanted everything packed.  So I laid everything that I wanted to bring out, it took up the whole queen size bed.  With the help of space bags I was able to get all of my clothes (not including the winter coat, snow pants, and snow boats that will be shipped over later), plus shoes into the big suitcase and the carry on.  Leaving the small suitcase for toiletries (aka contact solution and hair products that I will not be able to live with out).  Once everything was packed the BIG question was how much do the suitcases weigh.  The Peace Corps says that both of the check in bags (big and small suitcase) can ONLY be 50 lbs each.  For those who remember, when I went to Germany for 3 weeks my suitcase weighed A LOT more than that.  Knowing my past history of packing, I was very surprised to find that the big suitcase full of clothes was a little less than 50lbs and that the small suitcase was only around 30lbs.....meaning I can now pack more things!!!!  (aka more contact solution, more clothes, or a few jars of peanut butter...what to chose, what to chose)

Now with everything packed and my To-Do List getting smaller it is finally starting to hit that I will be leaving on Friday morning for.................. Philly.............and that is as far as I am thinking for right now.