into one suitcase and one large back pack. Follow up question: Can it possibly weigh less than 50 lbs?
Both of these questions are really just details I have to figure out in order to answer the real question that every exchange student comes face to face with: how do you pack your whole life into a suitcase?
There are obvious things to pack like clothes, shoes, toiletries, etc., but the hard part is figuring out what else to take. Books? Pictures? Bags? Journals? What other miscellaneous things do I have that I want to take with me? What is important enough not to leave behind for ten months?
Packing is a lot like evolution. Survival of the fittest is a very real thing that my clothing now has to face, because space is valuable. I've already started going through all of the stuff I want to bring and tossing what I can do without. Sorry navy striped sweater, you've been voted off the island. Black dress, you're next. I guess the one thought that makes the decisions easier is that I'll be wearing a uniform to school. It'll be an adjustment, but another exchange student, who's blog I've been reading, made a good point: a uniform will be nice since it means I wont have to worry about my clothes being culturally appropriate. I'm hoping it'll be nice to not have that to worry about all the time.
People always recommend that you bring something to hang up on a wall, someplace to put pictures or other things to make a space feel like your own. I haven't been the kind to plaster pictures of me and my friends all over my walls, I prefer my world map with pins stuck in all of the places I've been to, but I think it would be good to bring something to hang some pictures in as a reminder of home.
I leave in 13 days. I'm to the point where I've made a list of all of the people I want to see before I go, and I'm quickly realizing that I don't actually have that much time to see them all. A trip to Phoenix next Monday and Tuesday cuts down on my time, but I'm determined to make it happen. I don't want all of these visits to become goodbye sob fests, I don't like those kinds of goodbyes. I'll cry my eyes out once I'm in Ecuador, when I miss my people. For now, I just want to do the same things that I usually do with the people that I do them with. I want to sit in my room and talk to my best friend Olivia about Pretty Little Liars while we scroll through Facebook. I want to have a movie weekend with my friends Michelle and Rachel. I want normalcy, I want to enjoy it before I jump into the whirlwind.
I realized the other day that I've been focusing almost exclusively on missing my friends, and that I haven't been allowing myself to think about missing my family. I know how to be away from my friends, I don't see them everyday, I don't live with them. My family is a whole other story. I've traveled without my family before, but always short trips, and always with people that I'm close to. This exchange is entirely different, and I don't want to think about missing them because I know being homesick is going to suck. I don't doubt my ability to live in Ecuador, I know that I can do this, but I can't imagine what its going to be like to not see my mom, dad, and sister everyday for so long. I know that I'm avoiding it, but at this point I'm okay with that. I'll deal with homesickness when it hits me. I don't want to focus too much on the sad parts right now, I want to focus on being excited. It's a lot more fun :)
Hasta luego,
Elisa
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