My letters

I have personal relationships with several letters in the Thai alphabet. These relationships have developed as I learned to write my name and as I futilely attempt to copy clients' names off their identity cards and on to their medical records. I'm not going to lie, when I see one of "my letters" in a sign I do get sort of excited. Let me introduce you to my letters.

This is "circle rainbow backflip" and is the wonderful first letter of my name. The equivalent of my L and therefore is a letter I identify with quite strongly

This is "almost spiral" which has several impostor letters that look similar but have the circle in a different spot or are backwards or upside down. Don't be fooled, this is the good one.

This is "backwards question mark" and I have TWO of these is my name. I'm a pretty lucky girl


This is "boring letter". Unfortunately my name ends on a low note, but I guess everyone's gotta have vowels... I just wish I got the cooler looking ones.

This marks the end of my first weeks friendships with letters, it was limited entirely to my first name. But after the embarrassing "sign in at the conference" event, I expanded my circle to include my last name.

Welcome "Fancy 'Y'" Now here is a good looking vowel. It's even taller than everybody else.


And then comes "'W' with flair". Don't let its resemblance to W fool you, this is an F and again gets to be a little taller than the others on one side. Very classy.

And "backwards question mark" makes a reappearance



The final note in this symphony is "Fancy 'E'" which is actually more of a 'Y' but we can't complain. What a wonderful way to end a name.

Now this is not to say that I only have relationships with the letters in my name... how vain!


This is an example of one in a class of letters I call "nightmare letters" When I see them and am expected to reproduce them I shudder in fear.


Yet another "nightmare letter" why so many kinks? Really necessary?


And this is 'favorite letter not in my name' because it is fun to draw.


Now I know my kor-kai, kho-kai, kho-khuat's (or at least 11 of them) next time won't you sing with me.

Thailand knows my nightmares

Best Friend

It just occured to me that you all probably think I'm a spaz (at least those who don't personally know me and know it's true...) because I write half my posts like stories and half like a sarcastic fool. Explanation: some of the posts I write as articles for my local newspaper and are targeted more at adults who do not appreciate words like "doggy style" and "hoebag" in their reading.

In other news, I'm happy to present a picture of best friend. Unfortunately I scared the crap out of him with the flash from my camera and he ran away. I also spent forever trying to video tape the weird bird noise he makes that consists of five consecutive chirps. However, he's too unpredictable.


P.S. 'Chirp' is a stupid onomatopoeia
P.P.S. Onomatopoeia was a bonus spelling word in Fourth grade.

Article: The Battle Zone: My First Night in Thailand

My room is my fortress, surrounded by strong screens that protect me from my enemy- the mosquitoes. However, a fatal flaw in the design of my fortress is that the lavatory lies beyond the protective walls. To shower or relieve myself after dusk, I have to enter the battle zone.
My adventure begins with a ceremonial show of strength as I flick the larger mosquitoes off the screen door from the inside. I say ‘ceremonial’ because they return instantly so it is more of a confidence booster to me (that’s right, I can get them now but they can’t get me!) than an effective battle strategy.
The all-important moment involves quickly getting myself out the screen door without letting any of my enemies penetrate my fortress. Thankfully I am well practiced in this art due to long summers of entry and exit into my parent’s backyard gazebo. However, my Guilderland gazebo skills are inadequate for this Thai battlefield… I need a diversion. I flip on the fluorescent light that is all too irresistible to the enemy and with a few last flicks I swiftly slip out the door.
There is a gauntlet to run between my door and the bathroom door where all I can do is pass quickly, swatting like a mad woman. I hit the second diversion switch and urgently close the bathroom door behind me.
Now I am in an enclosed space with a fixed number of enemy soldiers, except now they vary in size, are resting on every surface, and are accompanied by other mercenary creatures. The floor is covered with ‘crawlies’ and my sink seems to be the final resting place of several ‘awkward flyers’ who always seems to be in their death throes (I am clearly not an entomologist).
My next weapon is the shower head. Though I have neither soap nor shampoo (they are in the luggage that was a casualty along the journey to the fortress) I soak myself to relieve the heat, remove the sweat, and create a slick surface that is difficult to bite. Like kamikazes the mosquitoes still try to bite even though they face sure death under the streams of water pouring from my shower head weapon. For now I am relatively safe except for the accidental stepping on crawlies which I try to avoid with a frantic dance.
Now comes the dangerous part- the toilet. I am basically a sitting duck for the duration of my toilet time as I have neither my fortress walls nor my weapon of choice to protect me. All I can do is my crazy swatting maneuvers and in desperate situations use the bidet hose as a backup weapon. As quickly as possible I swat my way to the sink and with some sadistic delight I watch the ‘awkward flyers’ swirl down the drain. I hand-sanitize which will have to suffice until my luggage can be retrieved or my Thai audio lessons get to the part about hygiene vocabulary.
I dash back through the gauntlet, hitting the lights as I go and at last I am back behind my fortress walls. Yes, there has been some enemy infiltration so I sleep under the hot but protective sheet on my bed. With my body armor approaching enemies must buzz around my head and their approach rings like an alarm in my ear and automatically triggers the swatting maneuvers. All in all I did lose some blood in tonight’s battle but you should see the other guy.
To my chagrin I am awake at 3am (jet lag) and during my brief sleeping spell I have kicked off my body armor and lay completely exposed to the enemy. Worst of all, my bladder warns me of the necessity for another battle. Watching all those “don’t get blood clots and die” videos on the 18 hour flight made me get a little excessive about hydration.
But this time, magically, the battlefield is empty except for huge but harmless moths. I flick the screen anyway and exit in a more relaxed, though cautious, manner. Then, when I open the bathroom door I see thousands of tiny red ants, picking up the corpses of the enemy casualties- like medics with stretchers on the battle field after surrender has been declared (the difference being that medics don’t generally eat the dead).
I guess that the ants are on my team and proceed to go to the bathroom in relative peace. I realize that I need to work this food chain if I am going to survive future battles (or get myself on a 3am peeing schedule). What I really need is a hungry lizard to eat all my enemies. I wonder which Thai audio lesson goes over reptile vocabulary?

Article: Growing up in Thailand in Two Weeks

I got off the plane in Thailand as a newborn, feasting my eyes on a whole new world, a little uncomfortable with the weather in my new environment, and eager to sleep. Since that day I have gone through several stages of development.
My infant years were collapsed into three days in which everything had to be done for me. Someone had to feed me, secure my shelter, and keep me comfortable. The greatest achievement in this period of my life was the first time I was able to sleep through the night (jet lag). Then I entered the exciting life of a toddler when I slowly learned to do things for myself.
First I learned how to acquire food, which, like a true toddler, entailed quite a bit of pointing at things. Next came the important lessons in manners. For table etiquette, first I had to master the fine motor skills necessary to eat politely which involves using the back of my fork to push food into my spoon which goes in my mouth. I’ve got the basics down but honestly could use a bib.
The next important step was learning the names of everyone around me. I arduously memorized the proper prefixes to address different adults in my life but as for their long multisyllabic names, that is still a work in progress. Just as my older brother was dubbed “kiss” until I could say “Chris”, the people in my life here who have particularly difficult names are getting special made-up names from me. I don’t feel entirely badly since no one can pronounce my name either.
As I get more mature there are a few benefits. At five days old I could be trusted with small amounts of money. While I am often lazy and go to 7-11 to buy necessities because they have a cash register that displays the total (and they have AC) I am now capable of hearing a number and within about 45 seconds producing the right colored currency. In my younger days I paid for everything with 100 baht bills so that I would be guaranteed to overpay and not need to calculate. However, I’m a big kid now, no shortcuts!
The equivalent of my first day at Kindergarten was my first day taking a bus into the city for my Thai Language lessons. It required the same preparations as my first day of school, namely learning my address and memorizing my phone number (but in Thai). However, this time I did not have the help of a little card pinned to my jacket although in retrospect that might have helped.
While buses here are red and not yellow and substantially less safe, the same basic concept applies. You have to tell the driver where you want to go, and there is the added trial of negotiating how much that ride will cost. I basically judge my worth as a human being here by how much I have to pay everyday to take a bus to my Thai Language classes. It varies by how much of a farang (foreigner) I seem like. If I pronounce all the words right and get the right tones associated with each, I can get to class for 15 baht (about 40 cents). On days when I stumble I have to pay twice that. On days when I’m really off, they have no idea where I want to go and drive away.
With Kindergarten comes loads of new knowledge. A major milestone occurred when I learned how to write my name in Thai. I was exceedingly proud of myself for this feat in the same way a child might be when he finally gets all his E’s going in the right direction. I may even hang my name up on my refrigerator; it is that worthy an accomplishment. You see, while in English we have 26 letters to contend with, in Thai there are a whopping 44. None of these letters are easy to draw. English has some letters like “simple circle” or “intersecting lines” but in Thai each letter comes with so much flair! There are swirls and loops and spirals everywhere. Each letter could stand alone as a work of modern art. So the feat of being able to reproduce four consecutively is a great source of pride for me.
And I am not the only one who is proud. Like a regular child I spend most of my time with my parents who teach me scores of vocabulary, facts, and lessons. Except my parents are the 30 coworkers in my office. They are almost as proud of my small feats as I am. However, like most parents, to them I remain their ‘baby’ so they are extra impressed by me yet still fuss over my comfort constantly. Wow, baby Laura just counted to ten! Everybody watch, baby Laura is going to show you how she writes her name! Okay, that’s enough show, baby Laura will get tired, go turn on her air conditioner and get her cold water. American babies cannot tolerate this heat.
I now consider myself a full blown adolescent. Yes, an illiterate one with a speech impediment, but an adolescent none the less. Just like when I was ten years old, I can’t wait to be a teenager! I yearn for semi-independence, the ability to communicate smoothly, and not having to hold someone’s hand when I cross the street.

Article: Conference Day

Attending a conference conducted entirely in a language in which you understand every sixth word is less than enlightening. However, such conferences might not be devoid of entertainment value, as I discovered last week.

I walked in with my boss and instantly I was a spectacle. I was the only foreigner and people referred to me when speaking as ‘farang’ or literally ‘foreigner’. The normal deluge of questions ensued: “Foreigner, do you speak Thai?” “Foreigner, where are you from?” “Foreigner, how long will you stay in Thailand?” Because I encounter these questions on a daily basis I have worked out eloquent responses in Thai which belie my actual language skills. The trick to these situations is to extricate myself immediately after I have exhausted the canned responses, before the questions start entering the realm of “Thai-vocabulary-not-yet-learned”. I am generally pretty good at leaving a conversation while a person still vastly overestimates my comprehension but occasionally I get stuck and have to admit that I am a fraud and don’t actually understand Thai all that well.

Sometimes, feigning comprehension gets me in trouble. For example, at this conference after I had answered the standard questions, they asked me to sign in. Initially I was excited to show off my newly acquired name-writing skill. Unfortunately, there were two lines for names… and I haven’t learned how to write ‘Frye’ yet. All I could think to do was to write ‘Laura’ in Thai and ‘Frye’ in English. So it looked dumb, but only the two people behind the desk would know.

I found a seat next to my boss and started guzzling the water offered and there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and the registration woman had printed me out a name tag- with my name exactly as it was written in the book. Half humorous, half embarrassing, I tried to focus on the former part of this situation.

The PowerPoint presentations were peppered with words in English like “Tacit Knowledge” “Process Evaluation” “Group Brainstorming” because I guess certain buzz words just don’t translate right. I didn’t understand enough to be terribly interested so I spent the next three hours practicing how to write my last name in Thai so that the next time the situation arises, I’d be prepared.

Suddenly I looked up from my notebook, covered in awkwardly drawn Thai letters, and saw two women in red tee-shirts walking to the front of the stage. Everyone stood up and loud mellow music was blasted from the sound system. I’m used to standing and pausing when the national anthem is played at 8am and 6pm every day but this certainly was not the national anthem. In fact, it was the ‘exercise break’ which also retained its English name.

Every single person in the room went through a series of stretches and bends for five minutes led by the two women in front and then sat back down and seamlessly the conference continued. Apparently this is just standard procedure, which makes sense since this was a conference sponsored by the Ministry of Health. In fact, I think it is a brilliant idea. I’m sure I was not the only one in the room who was lethargic after sitting still and listening for so long. A five minute pep-up session was much in order but I was just surprised at the buy in! Elderly, young, men, women alike all took their stretching to loud music very seriously. If only it were an appropriate time to take a picture.

I left the conference carrying a cool free tote bag, wearing an embarrassing nametag, proud of a new ability to write my last name in Thai, and slightly more limber than when I came.

Appreciate this

In order to write on this blog I have to navigate this site in Thai. I have no idea how to make the options appear in English and my limited technical skills mooched entirely off Noah are exhausted. I now keep a little cheat sheet in my journals with what the different buttons mean. For example, there is a big red exclamation in my journal that points to a button and says "don't press this, it's delete" which I only discovered after thinking it said "enter" (total shot in the dark) and pressed it and ended up with a blank blog. If I learn nothing else in Thai I will memorize what the word "delete" looks like.

The falling cocoons

Some creature is desperately trying to reproduce in my room. Every morning when I wake up
there are cocoons in various places. However I fear that I will never know what this creature is because the chances of any of these cocoons surviving until they hatch is incredibly low.
The stupid creature hangs cocoons from such precarious places as "my ceiling fan" or "my shower head" or "the inside of my toilet bowl" and I'm sorry but I refuse to melt, smell bad, or not flush to preserve the life of this creature.
I did try to be careful with the cocoon that was in my door hinge (try was the operative word) and I never intentionally shake things, but none the less, these cocoons just fall to their death like rain. Perhaps it's for the better. Any creature that can't at least case a spot for it's offspring a little bit maybe shouldn't be reproducing at all.

My favorite child

I know you're not supposed to have favorite children but I do...

It's a boy in a box!

I've never seen someone so excited by a box in my life.

He struck a few poses for the camera

One the box was destroyed I made him bracelets (or gauntlets) out of the cardboard... this is how we became best friends.


Okay last one, swear I'm not a stalker

Three months of peace of mind, one injection at a time

Mobile Units

While the government health centers cover a great deal of the territory, the immigrant populations tends to be left behind. They face discrimination and low priority in these health centers. So this is where PPAT comes in. We have a mobile unit that goes to rural immigrant villages every three months to administer family planning. We set up in a town pavilion, a local store, or a bus stop and give injections or three month supplies of the pill to women for around one dollar.

When we arrive women have already been waiting, they are given the next date at each visit and a loudspeaker announces our upcoming visit a few days prior. Just to get the stragglers we also beep the horn of our Toyota 4x4 (necessary for reaching a lot of these places) as we pass any settlements close to our destination.
Women all produce a ratty yellow cardboard card with their names, ID numbers, and a stamp for each time they come. One by one we dig up their medical records and take a brief medical history and then send them over to be injected/given pills.
The highlight for all the women is being weighed on the scale. We bring a scale with us and it is neat that something so simple can be such a huge attraction. Kids are really into it. We let them get weighed when we’re all done. Thanks to this scale I get a lot of practice with my numbers in Thai between about 40 and 90 (since we weigh them in kilos).
In one village every single woman who came seemed to have a one year old child. I can’t imagine living in poverty as an undocumented immigrant and having to worry about caring for and providing for a brood of children as well. The national goal is to have families with two children. The logo for PPAT consists of the silhouettes of a happy family of four.
I like to think that these mobile units bring three months of peace of mind, one injection at a time.

Apparently I'm a Hobag

Apparently I am a big hobag. Almost none of my clothing can be worn as is. It all requires pinning or layering to increase the surface area coverage. I guess I never realized how much skin I am accustomed to exposing in really hot places.
You see, I never considered myself to be a hobag. I don’t show midriff, my thongs don’t hang out the back of my pants, I don’t own short shorts, and no more than 5 percent of my breasts show at any time. But here, the definition is different. It’s the shoulders, the collar bone, and the chest that must be covered. Plus everyone wears their pants very loose (okay, not that loose, but looser than is possible to purchase pants in the US). So my clothes are all too tight and show too much shoulder.
In Morocco I guess I was more prepared for conservative dress. I rocked the long skirts and threw a scarf over my shoulders whenever there was a hint of skin. No one wears scarves so that quick fix is out. And when the temperature is so damn high, all I want to do is wear light and breezy sundresses, which seems to be just out of the question since they are really bad at covering shoulders.
I guess at least I won’t get sunburned…

An Open Letter to Thailand

Dear Thailand (or a least the square mile of Thailand that I know), I have a couple questions for you:

*Why aren’t coffee shops open at times when people might actually want to drink coffee, like ‘on the way to work’ or ‘after dinner’?
*Why, in a country whose climate causes so much sweating, does deodorant only come in the miniature size? Anny Kim don’t you dare answer that Asian people don’t sweat- I see evidence to the contrary.
*Why is counting to ten so difficult?
*Why do vendors let you try on clothing and then hand you a 3x3 inch mirror to look at yourself with?
*Why did my boss ask me twice “Is it alright for you to talk to the doctor from Tanzania? She is black you know.”
*How does one respond to aforementioned question?
*How come no matter what I order, every meal costs fifty cents?
*Why does your bubble tea have worm shapes instead of bubble shapes?
Drinking bubbles= delightful
Slimey worms slithering down your throat= gross.
*What is ozonated water and will I die if I drink it (okay, that’s more of a question for Dad)?
*Why can’t you give me an 8 second warning before a downpour, you know, a crack of lightening or a tiny squirt first? Just enough so I could get my umbrella open before being hopelessly soaked.
*Why are your television networks so damned good? More elaboration to come…
*Will you hate me if I shop at 7-11 instead of mom and pop shops? I know I am missing out on forming sweet little relationships and patronizing wholesome establishments but 7-11 with it’s air conditioning and cash register that shows the price so I don’t spend 20 minutes deciphering what my bill amounts to is just too powerful for me to overcome. Am I a bad person?
*Why can’t I figure out how to see websites in English? Do you know how hard it is to write a blog when all the options are written in Thai? I’m trying to blindly navigate the site based solely on memory from last years Morocco blog. Is there an easier way?
*Why are there 6 letters called ‘tor’ in Thai and 4 called ‘kor’? Do people ever learn this language?
*What ever happened to making letters that were easy to write, like a circle, or two intersecting lines?
* Are you serious about the double yellow lines? Because nobody takes them seriously…

Please answer at your earliest convenience.

Love,
Laura

Cooking Class

Time to learn how to cook this delicious food. Or rather, time to have someone very carefully instruct me on how to cook this food in a manner that I am absolutely incapable of reproducing.


First stop, the market to buy food

Tofu in every shape and color

Longest Green Beans Ever

The coconut shaving machine

Then 8 farang pile into a truck to drive off to our instructors home where we each learn to cook the six dishes of our choosing.

Our ever patient teacher"Minimum two chilies, Maximum four chilies"

Pound that curry!

Staring over my wok the pot bellied man seemed to communicate with the food every nanosecond and knew exactly when the appropriate time to add the next ingredient was. "Not yet, not yet NOW NOW NOW!"

And the final products, which we promptly ate:

Ginger Chicken
Papaya Salad and Pumpkin Ball Coconut Soup
The green curry, sorry I scarfed most of it down before I thought to take a picture

Needless to say I left this lesson quite full

Small Rural Children's Reactions to My Presence

The best part of this is that I didn't have to keep my camera out all the time to catch that first reaction because the first reactions stuck on their faces for minutes, and in one case, the entire time I was there. It's fun being a freakshow.

Stupefied


PerplexedSo confused it blurred the picture!

If I close my eyes maybe she will go away!

I'm older but I'm still wary...
Gasp!
So unimpressed...

My Room AKA the Most Delightful Place Ever

My room is a 10x10 space furnished with the hardest bed in
existence, a little vanity with a mirror that makes you look wider
than you are (I hope), a 1970's puke-green refrigerator that holds the
most precious item to me (a water bottle full of cold water), and a
television that gets the Indian Music Video Channel, the BBC, the
Weird French Movies Channel, and the Thai Soap Opera Channel. The
best attribute of this room is the ceiling fan that looks like a
regular standing fan that happens to be attached to the ceiling. It
also moves in a circular motion to access every bit of air in the
room. When lying on the bed you get waves of cool moving air every
time it makes a rotation. The wonderful side effect of this air
pattern is that it causes a little tornado of dust and hair on my
floor and pushes them in big circular motions so they attach to all
their friends and create a little dirt pile each morning so that I can
easily pick it up and don't have to sweep.
Another key feature of my room is the impenetrable screen
(this is not the same room as the setting for 'The Battle Zone'.
There are no mosquitoes in my room or my shower. I would like to here
state that a detachable shower head is vastly superior to a fixed one
to the point where I am not sure why fixed ones still exist.
There is one exception to the impervious nature of my room to
foreign flyers… the crawlers manage to get in. Specifically, little
red ants. I don't know where they live exactly but within 8 seconds
of me opening my fridge, they are ready to follow whatever food I
might have. I learned an important lesson the other night and have
now instituted a 'no drinking orange juice in bed' rule bc OJ really
rallies the troops and they SWARM. The ants are particularly fond of
crawling into my lap top which I can't imagine is good for either of
them.
And best of all I have a lizard and I named him 'best
friend' (no offense Sup). I don't see him too often bc he is stealthy
but he can't resist making a few bird sounds at night. I think he is
my protector from all biting insects. If the screens ever fail me, I
have a second line of defense. It is also possible that there are two
lizards bc sometimes his color looks different… in that case, I name
the other one 'second best friend'.
My room is also where I am secretly a bad Thai. I wear my
shoes in my room all the time. I know it's bad bc it will ruin my
habit of taking my shoes off before entering a room but it feels so
indulgent! Plus the last thing I want to do when I'm hauling my stuff
home from work is worry about taking off my shoes. And since I'm on a
feet kick let me tell you that I have finally found a place in the
world where I can BOTH wear sandals AND have clean feet. I know that
Team Morocco and Team El Salvador will not believe this (and let's
face it, Team NYC might have some trouble too) but honestly my feet
are always clear here. It could be the three showers a day or the
downpours of rain or the total lack of dust. Either way I think it's
a miracle.

Why American Airports/planes Make Me Want to Die but Thai Airports/planes Are Not Too Shabby

Why American Airports suck
a) Cab fares to get there are absurd
b) You can only exchange money after 3pm (bc morning flights only go to places where the dollar is the national currency!)
c) I was charged 50 cents to buy a bag to put my toothpaste in. This is unfortunate bc thin flimsy plastic with an oh so clever closing system was the antidote to my toothpaste bomb.
d) Television news is playing which I often forget actually makes you stupider (show me again the missing ear of the woman from the cat fight!)
One positive: The airport reminded me that pay phones are nasty and the magical yet often unappreciated thing about cell phones is that you are guaranteed to only touch your own ear sweat.

Why Thai Airports/planes Rock:
a) I got to choose which movies and when to watch them in coach which had as much leg room as first class on delta.
b) My carry-on was actually thoroughly searched which sucked the frustration out of watching a cursory search that wastes your time by people who couldn’t find a snake if it bit them (ya like that Mom?)
c) I got to fall asleep to the Thai meditation channel convinced that I would actually learn Thai in my sleep.
d) “Stan the exercise man” warns you to stay hydrated and move around every two hours to avoid blood clot death. I may have taken this a little too seriously.

Yoga

My first day at the internship consisted of an orientation lecture, introductions to all the staff (not a single one of whom I could name now), a weird definition of my function, and a yoga class. Apparently at 3pm every day we all just do yoga. Now this is pretty sweet except for one key factor- I have nothing remotely appropriate to wear to a yoga class. My eventual outfit consisted of black tights under old soccer shorts and a nightgown top. Everyone else was wearing matching yellow shirts and sweatpants (as if simply standing naked here doesn’t induce sweating). My shirt was bright red. My boss also made me sit in the front which blew for three reasons:
1) I couldn’t understand the instructions bc they were in Thai
2) I couldn’t copy anyone in front of me bc there wasn’t anyone in front of me
3) All the people behind me could not only see my outfit, but my foolish maneuvers as I attempted to watch the instructor who was on a platform aboveme and do yoga at the same time.
Needless to say I didn’t get a very good workout but did do a lot of staring at the instructor. It took me a while to figure out what was odd about him and since everything else is coming in threes, there were also three weird physical traits
1) His adams apple was actually the size of an apple
2) His triceps were 5 times as large as his biceps which gave him a ‘poorly drawn cartoon’ look
3) His feet were one step away from being webbed a la Waterworld.
This leads me to the one source of enlightenment I got from this Yoga session, apparently I am a ruthlessly mean and superficial person.

Packing

I discovered this phenomenal website called “OneBag.Com” which goes into exhaustive detail about how it is only ever necessary to take a carry-on with you anywhere in the world. Written by an engineer, it outlines the qualities of the perfect bag and what should go in it and exactly how it should be placed. I marveled at the diagrams of how to wrap-pack clothing so it didn’t wrinkle… but I’m me so I had already been packed for two weeks. Anyway, onebag.com would be ashamed of me. I have the largest suitcase with me that weighed in at a staggering 73 lb(but I smiled my way out of the overweight fee). The magic of it all is that half of what I brought is useless to me since anything without sleeves is just not okay where I’m living and in my desperation to stay entertained I tossed in 30 lbs of novels I won’t have time to read.
Things I should have packed but didn’t
1) My belt… rendering all my pants unwearable bc they will fall down.
2) Bug spray (see Battlezone story)
3) Athletic Apparel
However the onebag.com section on why your checked luggage will get lost did not fall on a deaf ear so I carefully prioritized which things were too precious to get checked. I ended up with a 30 lb carry-on full of mostly books and favorite undergarments and more purses than conceivably necessary… It sort of makes you realize something about yourself in the same way that you might when reflecting on which items you risked your life during a house fire to save… Except what I realized about myself is that I’m a dork and random and should my luggage have gotten lost I would be walking around naked except for cute undies and a great bag.