Packing and getting oriented

Ahh! Long day of preparations that should have been rather chaotic, but actually went rather smoothly. Although it still seems far off and somehow surreal all these last minute affairs are making the trip more and more real.

First order of the day - Packing Party! Everyone brought their suitcases to the crowded make-up room at the BDA so we could place donations, attach bright yellow tags and note where costumes and props would be. The room had bags strewn all across the floor and into the hallway and flip flops and text books spilling out of crates. We found that the limitations on luggage has changed, negatively. The total of length width and height was originally to be under 115 inches but now it cannot be more than 62 inches for packed bags and under 50 pounds. We believe it hasn't affected us but it was a bit of a scare.

Jenny started interviewing people for her project. She took people aside in the midst of this barrage of baggage to ask them what they were expecting out of the project and how they were feeling with the departure date being so close. She will continue to briefly remove people from activities to quickly pick their brains for the duration of the trip.

After all the luggage had been accounted for, we headed over to the JUB ballroom for a Study Abroad Pre-departure Orientation. What we thought was going to be a nice dinner with some information, guidelines and notes turned out to be a 4 hour study session. It was particularly rough for us since we've been planning and preparing to leave for almost a year now to a place we have a relationship with already, and aren't technically "studying abroad." A lot of the information simply didn't apply. We did however learn obscene gestures from other cultures and got to eat a scrumptious 3 course dinner complete with a fruit custard dessert adorned with neon green syrup and pansies - which many people were surprised to learn are edible!

Anyway - I believe the countdown has reached single digit status! Scary, exciting, stressful, etc. But I think we're gonna make it just fine.