The last five days have been difficult with saying good-bye to different people we love literally everyday. But, hopefully the hardest part of this whole experience is nearing the end as we grow closer to taking this great leap forward in our lives.
Quick rundown of the itinerary for the next few days... Friday we fly out from Louisville to Philadelphia for staging (an intense one day orientation and prep for Macedonia). 40 other volunteers heading to Macedonia will be in our group known as Mak 16 (the 16th group going to Makedonija). We're in Philadelphia for the night staying in the historic district. We catch a bus around noon on the next day to ride up to JFK to fly out Saturday night. After an 8 to 9 hour flight we'll land in Vienna... Shelley wants a long lay over so she can soak up the scenery and culture of the back drop to her favorite movie - Sound of Music. Vienna will be in for a treat if Shell feels the impulse to sing "I Have Confidence!" :) Fortunately for the people of Vienna :), I believe it is a short lay over before we fly out to Skopje (the capital of Macedonia) where Sunday will be a sunny 93 degrees F. We then head to our training site on another bus to the third largest city in Macedonia, Kumanovo (about 100,000 people). Bottom line: we leave soon and will be moving around a lot for the next week.
As we move around, we have a limit of 100 lbs each on packing. Below is a compiled list of Peace Corps suggestions for packing, fellow PC blogger suggestions, and those from volunteers currently in Macedonia. We are not bringing maybe even half of this :). The list just served as a nice starting point and prevented us from forgetting anything important like underwear. It should also be mentioned that we've been told that most anything we need can be bought in Macedonia, but quality sometimes varies. Here's the list!
Laptops
Camera
Long Underwear
2 pairs of glasses
Multipurpose tool
sleeping bags
external hard drive
hiking backpacks
hiking boots (waterproof, goretex)
formal attire
professional (everyday) attire (pants, shirts, ties, sweater, jacket, dresses, skirts, pant suits, underwear, and jeans)
photos of home
hobbies (frisbee, deflated basketball, knitting needles, etc)
clothes for community service events
measuring cups
TEFL specific needs (interactive games, teaching ideas, picture flashcards, cassette tapes for young children, classroom decoration, story writing materials, lots of pictures, good, definitive grammar text, markers, clear contact paper, index cards, pens, mechanical pencils, scissors, children's books, work sheets.)
flash drive
wool socks
scarf/gloves/hat
stepdown converter/adaptors
ipods
speakers for computers
router
surge protector
cell phones
toothbrush
umbrellas
sunglasses
things that will remind us of home
seasonings
prescriptions
Tampons!
beard trimmer
razors
warm slippers
compressions/packing bags
jump rope
allergy meds
nice sheets
duct tape
eyeglass tools
mag light
BBQ sauce (recently added :)
We are bringing select things from this list that are more important to us than other things. Other volunteers find other things to be more important. It is definitely comforting to know that we can many necessities over there. A lot of PC volunteers don't have that luxury. And for those placing bets... as of right now, Shelley's luggage is over the weight limit and we'll have to move stuff to my bags :).
The next post will be from Macedonia!!!! We love you all!
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