Dakar bound

So a few days ago I got a hangnail. Yes, this seems like a relatively insignificant fact to be posting to the world. However, that quickly turned into an ingrown toenail, which quickly became infected, and by yesterday had turned into a puffy, swollen mess. Since we were supposed to return to the village yesterday, I called med to ask what I should do, and they told me to come to Dakar so they could check it out so it doesn't get out of hand. Infections can get bad quickly here if they go untreated, and in the village I don't have access to basic things we take for granted like showers to keep clean and buckets of hot water to soak infections in. Med put me on antibiotics (which actually reminds me to take that now) to make sure the infection doesn't get worse. It still hurts a lot- I can't put pressure on it and have been limping around for a couple of days now, but that should pass pretty quickly.
The upside of all of this is that I get to see Dakar a few weeks early! Not that we're out in the city or anything, we're sort of stuck in the med hut. The sick bay (med hut) is located in the PC office and consists of a living room with a small library in it, a den with a tv, dvds and several couches, a dining room, a full kitchen with fridge, microwave and stove, and several bunk rooms. The best part- it is air conditioned. I feel like I'm back in America all of a sudden. Unfortunately, we're killing all of our walk around money on feeding ourselves here. Dakar is a place where all the ex-pats come to hang out in Senegal, so prices are that which you would find in America or higher because of shipping costs. I bought a large can of ravioli in the supermarket today for 1900 cfa, or the equivalent of around 4 bucks american. that's a lot when they give you 50 bucks every other week to live off of. I shouldn't really be spending any money when I get back to site since my family feeds me, but I still don't have the leeway to go to the market there and buy a bunch of extra stuff.
The supermarket here is equally as American as the med hut is. It really did look like a regular stop and shop or equivalent, and it was located in what is basically a regular mall with cafes and a few stores. It was culture shock all over again seeing clean aisles of food and supplies after walking through the market in Thies only a few times. I'm pretty sure the next 2 years will just be one giant culture shock, the cause of which varies depending on where I am.
The other nice thing about being here is that I get the chance to talk to a lot of current PCVs of all ages. I've heard lots of stories about traveling, being at site, integration, languages, different regions throughout the country, and just the social every day scene of being a PCV in Senegal. It makes me super excited to swear-in in October. I've got a ways to go, but I'm sure as I start to get the language down better and integrate into my family more, the time will go by faster.
So I'm off- hopefully for real this time- back to the village tomorrow morning. They kept us here an extra night to make sure everything was fine before we left again. I'm sure it will be. Got a few pics of Dakar in the meantime.
Peace out y'all.
~E

just a little side note

I just was skyping with my dad and sister, and my dad noted that you may not know you can click on the pictures on the side of the blog. So just in case you managed to make it to this blog but have found yourself technologically challenged, click on the pictures and you will see more fun pictures of my life. speaking of which, I actually just updated it and put up a few more pics of the training center for all to see. enjoy them! I will also have some pictures for you all in a couple weeks of my homestay family. And potentially a video if I can ever get enough bandwidth to upload it. That may involve and early morning wakeup to get on the internet when nobody else is competing for bandwidth, we'll see.

I sort of meant to write a longer, more reflective blog entry tonight, but I'm all blogged out for the moment, so I'll start writing in my own journal a bunch of thoughts over the next two weeks while I'm gone at homestay and write you a long reflective entry when I get back, how does that sound?

K good I'm glad you all agree.

Alright well have a good 2 weeks for those of you who actually follow this (apparently more than I thought, according to Bec) and I will be back with fun stories, pictures and soon to be announced permanent site after homestay, part deux.

Love you all, world.

Emily

Homestay, Part Un

Hello All!

I apologize in advance for the length of this entry. A lot has happened. Happy reading, inshallah.

I am back from my first week at homestay, and I am alive and well. I will do my best to cover the bases, but it's a bit overwhelming. Also, don't hate me- I don't have pictures of it yet. I felt that getting there, not speaking the language and being completely lost, then just pulling out my camera and starting to snap pictures of everyone without being able to explain myself might not be such a good idea. So be sure that I will be taking pictures when I go back and will have fun things to share with all of you.

The first night there was.... interesting. Ok it sucked. But it sucks for everyone. My language class consists of me and three other people, and they loaded us and our LCF (language and culture instructor) and all our stuff into a sept place- which is basically just a semi-broken down station wagon that works as the main source of public transportation in Senegal- and drove the half hour to Ker Madaro. I was dropped off first. I am actually living with the chief of the village and his family, which consists of about 25 loud, spirited Africans who were all excited to see me. They pulled up the house, where my welcoming party was waiting, and then said goodbye and they will see me at 9am the next morning. I was led around to see the bathroom, a very lovely squat toilet and separate stall for bucket baths, and my room. The room is just a plain cement walled room with a bed in it and a window. I have a key to it, though the lock is pretty fidgety, and I put my stuff down and was led over to a cement foyer where I was offered a chair, and all 20 or so kids sat down on a mat in front of me staring up at me as if I was a teacher and they were my new class. I think they were expecting a speech or something, not realizing that I spoke little more than “How are you? I am fine” and how to tell them my name. They promptly named me Fatuu after my mother in the village and went around the room telling me all of their names. Clearly confused, they suggested I write them down by writing on an invisible piece of paper in the air, so I went to go grab my notebook, and it stayed by my side almost every minute the entire week afterwards.

Most of the rest of the night followed suit. I walked around following people and not able to say anything to anybody or have any idea what was going on. We have electricity there, so we watched tv for a little while at one point, and flipped back and forth between French and Wolof channels while 15 kids sat on the floor around the bed and I sat there while my brother pointed to things in the room or body parts and named them while I wrote them down in the notebook. Water in the compound is taken from a hose that they use to fill one of 2 large drums that they have with some old tin coffee cans in them that are used for filling kettles, buckets for bucket baths or just drinking out of. I awkwardly set up and filled my water filter from it and moved it into my room where people wouldn’t stare at me for using this strange plastic contraption to drink. Dinner was about as typical Senegalese as it gets- we sat on the ground (I actually had a small 6-inch high bamboo stool because I am an honored guest) around the communal bowl while eating the national dish-ceebujen- with our hands. Yes, they did use soap and water to wash up first. No, that doesn’t really make it less awkward the first time around. We sat around on the mats outside the house for a little while, and soon afterwards, I tried to signal that I was tired and just went back to my room. It is extremely hot because there is really no good ventilation in my room, but I was so tired that I pretty much just passed out after a quick “what the hell did I get myself into” to Tim. I later found out that everyone in the stage had the same or relatively similar experience as me. It comes with the whole Peace Corps package.

That’s not to say the whole week went that way.

The next day, I was awkwardly told to grab my notebook and led to my LCFs homestay at 8 the next morning, where I found Lisa, another woman in the group, sitting and struggling to figure out what was going on as well. We discussed how we both ate the strange rice and smoked fish dish that is the lifeblood of most Senegalese and were told led to class at 8 am. Spencer and Peter, the other two people in the group, arrived, as well as Aissatu, my LCF, and we pretty much just stared blankly at each other as we tried to figure out what had just happened. After a debrief, we had a chance to discuss our experiences and figure out good ways to deal with it some more. We had language class sitting under a mango tree in the yard, and went back to our homes for lunch and rest time at 1. The second day wasn’t a hell of a lot easier, but it’s amazing how much you can start to bond with someone with just using facial expressions and laughing about stupid stuff. Nabuu, one teenage girl, helped me immensely by showing me what I need to do and helping me with language practice over time. The little kids are all super willing to help, but have no concept of speaking slowly or what it is like to speak to someone and have them not understand you.

Bucket baths aren’t all that bad either. They consist of a bucket of water and a smaller bucket that you use to scoop up the water and pour it over yourself, then try to lather up and rinse off as best you can. When you’ve been sitting around and sweating all day, any sort of cool water is much appreciated. It’s no shower, but you feel somewhat clean afterwards for about 10 minutes or so until you start sweating again and go sit on the ground.

The next few days were better. I started to learn a bit of a schedule, and I figured out that to get away from the ceebujen, you can go to a boutique and buy some small, chocolate filled cookies and pineapple juice. They also have mangoes there, since it is primarily a farming village. Believe it or not, I actually started to learn the language a little bit. I certainly do not speak it by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s amazing how you can hear a word a couple of times and eventually start to pick it out in a conversation. Wolof is completely different than anything you’ve ever heard too. As I was writing this blog entry, I told Brendan back home that “wolof is weird- like it has the article at the end of a word rather than the beginning, doesn't have verb conjugations but has pronoun conjugations depending on the context, and conjugations of pronouns to make things negative too. and the written language is a combination between french accents, english characters and phonetic symbols.”

Also, my mom at site had a baby yesterday! She was born yesterday at about 6 am, and I saw her when I came home from class for the morning when she was only a few hours old. I have never seen a baby that young before. This also means that I will be attending the baptism coming up, which occurs 8 days after the birth. It’ll be fun.

That seems to sum it up to me. Missing probably tons of other unimportant-but-probably-still-interesting details, that brings me to today. It is AMAZING coming back to some semblance of American civilization that is known as the Peace Corps training center. We have salad, and showers, and toilets… the things one takes for granted. Today was fantastic- we got to speak English, walk around the market in Thies, and I did laundry and now have tons of clean clothes which smell lovely. I did take more pics of the training center today- I’ll try to post those tomorrow. In the market, I finally got my adapter!! And I bought fabric and had a tailor make me a pagne, which is an African ankle-length wrap skirt that I will wear to the baptism. I was pretty proud of myself that after a week at homestay, I was able to have small, basic conversations with people in the market. I certainly am nowhere near fluent and can’t get much past the basic greetings, but a few key words go a long way. It does a lot for your confidence doing something like conducting a transaction in a language you only learned that you needed to know a week ago.

Right now this is getting long so I will probably just leave it be for a little while. Stay tuned for another quick update and some pictures before I go back on Wednesday for a 2 week stay back there. Don’t forget to text me!! (free from google.)

Love all of you,

Emily

Asalamalekum, everyone

So I will officially be speaking Wolof the next 2 years! I'm actually super excited about that, the language is the most commonly spoken throughout the county, so I will be able to travel around Senegal and understand a lot more people wherever I go.

We actually started language classes today too. I learned how to greet people, ask what their name and job is, and say goodbye. It's pretty overwhelming because the language doesn't sound like anything you've ever heard. However, I think it'll be pretty fast to pick up once I get the hang of it and figure out the basic grammatical structure because verbs are not conjugated (though pronouns are, which is a bit awkward) and there are only three tenses. During class, our teacher made us go out in the middle of a lesson and talk to some of the Wolof-speaking staff members around us and ask them the questions that we had just learned. Between our horrible accents and barely remembering what to say, it was a bit of a mess. I can't imagine what tomorrow will be like.

So you know, tomorrow we are moving to our homestays for the first time. This means that we are placed with a random family that speaks our target language, and we have to wander around trying to figure out who people are and what is going on in a household where nobody speaks a word of English. Hopefully one or two people will speak some French so that we can meet halfway and they can help translate stuff occasionally. For the most part, however, it will be a major culture shock.

Logistics- I will have my own room and a key to that room, but I will share the bathroom, or hole in the ground, with the rest of the family. I don't know how many people I will be living with or at what level of development they are, but I suppose we'll see. One thing I do know, all of the families are extremely excited to meet us, and they are instructed to treat us as members of their own family and help us to learn the language and culture, understanding that we will all make mistakes and act like 3 year olds because we don't know any better.

One thing I can tell you, I will do my best to take pictures of everything going on in my life and get them uploaded when I get back to the training center on Sunday. I'll even get some posted for you tonight if possible!!

Love you all,

Emily

Moving right along

Written 8/14/2010

So the internet is down now, so I’m just hanging out in the disco hut writing a blog entry. What better way to spend a Saturday night in Senegal? The disco hut, in case I have yet to explain that, is the big grass-roofed gazebo that we all congregate in on a daily basis. It’s also, ironically, the best place to get internet access at the training center.

I’m perpetually itchy and covered in mosquito bites. They’re unavoidable. You can deter them a bit with repellant, but they still manage to find that one spot that you missed. Every time. It’s a way of life here. No worries, I’ve got the anti-malarials to protect me. I’m one of the lucky ones. They put me on doxycycline instead of the mefloquine (spelling??) because I have a health record of an adjustment disorder. This is due to chilling out with a counselor once a week in college to keep me sane (pretty much all of my friends did, I guess it was the cool thing to do) but to make insurance cover it, they diagnose it as an “adjustment disorder” and it goes on my health record. Peace Corps doesn’t want to give the meflo to people who may be prone to adjustment issues or depression or whatever it may be, so I don’t have to take the medication that gives people crazy dreams at night! And it’ll clear my acne. I’ve already noticed here that my face is actually clearer than it was in the states despite the fact that I sweat all the time. Doxy will help I’m sure, but it’s probably also due to the fact that I haven’t put on any makeup since staging in DC, and voila! Clear skin for Emily. Amazing what it takes to learn these things.

In other news, a fantastic event occurred today!! We got to leave the center! We have been on lockdown in the PC training center since we touched down on Wednesday morning and took the bus here, so today during the safety and security session, the security coordinator Etienne walked us through the entrance to Thies, and we had our first chance at interacting a bit with the outside world. We had to walk around the area called the “red zone” where a few abandoned run-down military barracks shelter scary people like drug dealers or rapists, so they had to let us know where that was so we could avoid it before we were allowed to leave. We had a chance to shout the occasional, “Asalamalekum!” to passerby, and a few taxi drivers drove by slowly with their phone cameras out to take pictures of the large group of toubabs walking through their town awkwardly. I suppose if I saw a huge group of people with an awkward skin color who didn’t speak English and shouting random things to people and waving walking through downtown Sharon, I would probably grab my camera too.

Later in the evening, we had a chance to walk around the corner with some of the current PCVs and go to the “stadium” which is basically a grassy field with some rusty soccer goals, a few cement bleachers, and a dirt track around it. Running again felt good, but I need to remember not to go out too fast in this humidity. It’s pretty killer. I can definitely get used to it though. And the good thing- it’s not supposed to be much more oppressive than this the majority of the year. It’ll get a little bit hotter in October because the rainy season ends, but then it cools down a bit during the American winter, and I’ll have a few months of refreshing, cool(er), dry, air. Also, I know for a fact that I will not be placed in the northern part of the country where it gets really bad because Agfo volunteers like me have not conducted many successful projects there. I’ll pretty much definitely be going south, which in Senegal, believe it or not, is a good thing.

Two other exciting pieces of news: We get to go out into Thies for real tomorrow. We have a block set aside before dinner to go exploring a bit with the help of some current PCVs, so I get to actually see the world outside of our little compound! This is going to be so funny to look back on in a year or two when I’m remembering the days when I was completely incapable of functioning in society, and walking around town saying hi to everyone and joking around with them in their native language seems like no big deal.

Exciting piece of news number 2: I find out my language tomorrow!!! Which will also narrow down the areas where I could be placed. Then, very quickly, we will have our homestay orientation and be on our way Monday morning after our first session to some random village to stay with some random family who speaks some random language. Funfun. Won’t have internet access during the week, so I will update you all via transcribed handwritten journal entries. That will become a common theme very quickly I believe. We’ll be back to the center on Sunday afternoon, so I am looking forward to a week of awkward, unintelligible conversations during which I will completely embarrass myself and probably end up laughing my ass off at myself. I’m pretty sure that’s the idea.

At any rate, I’ll take pics of Thies and have them uploaded for all of you lovely (3 or 4) followers that probably read through this. Stay tuned.

~Emily

In the beginning...

So I am currently at the Training center in Thies. Staging was interesting, I suppose. We basically just sat in a hotel conference room and talked about our expectations and how we plan on dealing with difficult situations. C’est la vie. Getting the yellow fever vaccination wasn’t too fun- not because it hurt, but because it involved sitting around in a small fluorescent-lit room for 3 hours on the floor waiting for the nurses to go through everyone’s paperwork and get all of the vaccinations together. Then we got back on the bus and went to their airport. Washington Dulles is gorgeous. The international terminal is HUGE. Google it if you haven’t been there. Me and a few of my new friends went out for lunch at a restaurant there, and I had my last American beer for a while, and a lovely cobb salad. I will miss that.

The flight was annoying- it wasn’t horrible considering we were flying to Africa (about 8 hours) but we left at 6 ish and landed at 5 am local time- 1 am eastern time. Then we had to get through customs, gather up our baggage, get to the busses while the country director greeted us, and take a 2 hour busride through the outskirts of Dakar to the training center during what felt to us like the early hours of the morning. Needless to say we were not exactly alive-awake-alert when we got here. After a quick breakfast of baguette with peanut butter and jelly and tea, they let us take a nap. The afternoon was just introductory sessions and medical interviews where we received our malaria pills and got a chance to discuss any particular medical concerns we had. No worries though, we get more vaccinations while at PST (pre-service training) and plenty of medical sessions discussing how to stay healthy in Senegal. We even got a whole manual on common ailments and what to do for PCVs here today. We also got med kits containing all the stuff that my mom already gave me, even bug spray and sunscreen (thanks mom, can you say I told you so?)

Last night was a little difficult. As we were going to bed, it sort of hit me that holy s***, I’m in Africa. And I’m not going home in a week. Or a month. Or a year. Well, maybe a year. But then I’m coming back to Africa. Between being nervous, adjusting to the new food, the new environment, and being extremely sleep-deprived, I found myself in the bathroom throwing up while everyone was going to sleep. Welcome to Africa, I suppose. Later in the night, one of the current PCVs who was here to help with training came over and talked to me as I was sitting on the step outside my room, and told me all about his experience out in a remote village and how despite the seeming removal from everything, communication with the outside world is still surprisingly easy these days. There is cell phone reception virtually everywhere, and one can easily find and internet café or get back to the regional office to get on the internet every so often. Hence, expect more blogging fairly regularly. I felt a lot better after talking to him.

So, my sister emailed with a barrage of questions earlier, and said I can answer them on the blog for everyone. So here-

Sleeping arrangements: we sleep in sort of a bunk- yes, with bunk beds and all, single sex. We have a single sex bathroom, and it amazingly has running water, real toilets, and a shower. The shower is just a faucet or water that shoots out from overhead without a real showerhead, but it still feels amazing and since it is not heated it is the perfect temperature for here.

Food: Breakfast is normally a baguette with some peanut butter, jelly or chocolate sauce type of stuff which I haven’t tried yet. Also, they have instant coffee that they put in hot milk, so much for getting over my coffee addiction. Supposedly if you drink milk in the rest of the country it may not be healthy for you, but for now it’s safe in the center and it will become a judgement call in the future when I learn more about my host family and what the culture is like in my particular region. For lunch, we sit around a communal bowl and eat the national dish with a spoon- rice and fish, usually with some vegetables. It’s spicier than I’m used to (for those of you who know me, I don’t really like spicy food) but I’ll get used to it. It really does taste good though. For dinner, it’s more traditionally American, with chicken and potatoes on our own plate with silverware and all.

Weather: It’s pretty much the same weather here as it was at home. It is currently the rainy season, but it hasn’t rained yet since we’ve been here. I mean we only got here yesterday. However, there are a lot of clouds that roll through which indicates the rainy season, as opposed to the super clear skies where you don’t see a cloud for months on end during the hot season (according to a current PCV.)

Job: I’m excited to be agroforestry. It sounds like a really diverse type of field, and I’ve met volunteers that have worked on the moringa initiative, in the mangroves, and making live fences. Moringa is a local fast-growing tree that has edible leaves that locals can eat to get some fiber. I actually tried it today. It pretty much tastes like what you imagine eating leaves would taste like, but you can sort of bite into it. I’ll put a few pictures up soon. Do not worry, I promise! I just want to buy a converter for my computer- I’m borrowing somebody else’s now.

So that’s where I am at for all of those who are wondering what my first 2 days in Africa were like. I don’t know if I will update this every day because it takes a while and I want to spend more time getting to know my stage (pronounced with a French accent, stahj, sort of). However, don’t forget to email me if you want to get in touch!! Or call or text, since it’s free for me to receive them!

Love to you all back in America,

Emily

Up up and away

Well, the time has arrived. Off into the world.

I am currently sitting at Logan airport (who knew you could get free wifi access here?) and typing a new blog entry to prevent my sister from going crazy clicking the refresh button to see if I've posted something, and to keep you all updated on

my increasingly interesting life.

Packing was... fun? It's a weird experience trying to cram what you think you will need for a couple years into 2 bags and a carryon. You just have to ke

ep thinking that you can buy stuff there, as I have read in countless PC blogs, Senegal is not the moon. There are people there. Who, occasionally, buy things.

Here is what my living room looked like a few days ago:

I organized everything into piles by category and took an inventory on my computer, which you can see on the coffee table. After several hours, it was finally organized into some semblance of a transport-able entity:

Hopefully I'll be able to move it all through Regan when I get there in 2 hours. I will get my exercise for the day. It's a bit over 80 pounds total, but oh well.

It was around this time, looking at my bags, that my Peace Corps experience began. I looked over at the pile of empty wrappers and bags from all the new stuff I bought and imagined how different my life would be and how much my views of American culture would change after being away for a while. I also reflected on just how much crap I had managed to fit into those 3 bags. Here's the packing list if you're curious that I made while I was putting everything in order. You don't have to read it all, but it gives you an idea of what one brings when anticipating living for 2 years in Africa:

Clothing:

· 1 pair jeans

· 5 skirts

· 2 pairs running shorts

· 1 pair jean shorts

· 1 pair sweatpants

· 1 outfit for going out

· 1 fancy dress/blazer

· 2 running shirts

· 5 sports bras

· 14 regular shirts-some sleeves, some sleeveless

· 1 long sleeve shirt

· 1 pair rainpants

· 1 sweatshirt

· 4 pairs socks

· 2 bathing suits- 1 bikini, 1 1-piece

· 1 pair nice sandals

· 1 light windbreaker

· 1 raincoat

· 1 EMS button-down shirt

· 1 set of sheets

· 10 pairs underwear

· Small fleece blanket

· 1 small bath towel

· 1 quick dry towel

· 2 bandanas

· 1 hat-brimmed

· 1 quick-dry baseball cap

· 1 belt

· 1 school laundry bag (for those of you who know what I’m talking about, “Get Involved!”)

· Tevas

· Chacos

· Running shoes

· Hiking boots

Personal Hygiene/Toiletry:

· Anti-itch cream! (afterbite and hydrocortisone)

· Toothpaste

· Face wash

· Face/body sunscreen

· Some cover-up (I know it’s Peace Corps, but I want to look nice for conferences and going out in Dakar or something)

· 2-in-1 shampoo

· Deodorant

· 2 tubes moisturizer

· Variety of feminine products, including Diva cup

· A couple of razors

· 2 new toothbrushes

· Hair ties/headbands/clips

· Small thing of moisturizer

· Nail clipper/file

· A bunch of hotel soaps, enough to last a few months at least

Medication:

· Way more than I would ever need in a lifetime. Thanks mom. Sorry medical office.

Office Supplies-ish stuff:

· Some tacks- they came in handy for everything in college, I don’t see why they won’t come in handy in Senegal

· Roll of scotch tape

· Some post-it notes

· Baggy of pens/pencils/highlighters, etc

· American stamps to send stuff back with people

· Planner- my life blood

· Regular notebook for writing letters, taking notes, etc

· Bunch of manila envelopes to organize stuff

Electronics:

· Laptop

· Pack of AA batteries-only needed in headlamps

· Headset for cellphone, it’s nice sometimes

· Wind-up/solar flashlight from L.L. Bean

· Mini camera tripod (thanks dad)

· 2 small headlamps

· New camera (waterproof/dustproof, yay!) and charger

· Old camera- doesn’t matter if it gets stolen/broken but it works as a backup

· 2 spare sets of headphones

· Ipod/case

· Webcam/headset for skype

· Small extra microphone

· Lens cleaner/cloth for camera

· Spare SD cards

· Old running watch-water resistant with stopwatch, etc

· External HD for backups

· Solar calculator

Outdoorsy stuff:

· 2 bottles 99% deet, because I like the idea of burning off my skin in exchange for not getting bug bites

· 2 bottles sweat-resistant bug spray, 25% deet, because I also hate the idea of the bug spray not staying on me

· Rest of our bottle of “mountain suds” biodegradable all-purpose soap. I suppose it works if I’m on a bike trip somewhere and am washing up in a river.

· Swiss army knife

· Multi tool

· Small pruning sheers, also a multi tool (god I love Ocean State Job Lot)

· Waterproof bag to use as laundry bag/waterproofing on trips

· Compass from Aunt and Uncle

Miscellaneous:

· 2 nalgenes/1regular water bottle

· 2 boxes drink mix

· Small umbrella

· Small roll duct tape

· Books

· Bag of different spices

· Several cheap pairs of ocean state sunglasses

· Pictures/other small memorabilia (shell to remind me of rhode island, some old tickets, etc)

· 3 boxes plastic baggies- 1 snack size and 2 freezer size

· A few plastic food containers

· 1 masterlock padlock to use on luggage/trunk in country if I get one

· Small sewing kit

· Picture book from Aunt

· French dictionary/verb book

· Small hand mirror

I'm pretty sure my room back home is still a bit of a mess, but what can you do when you only have a few days to organize your life, visit with your family, and prepare to embark on this ridiculous journey of mine. Sorry mom and dad.

Well, off to staging. See you on the flip side. AKA Virginia.