How do you Pack for Six Months?
We are leaving for our Fulbright tomorrow. Well, actually it is later today since it is after midnight. We have spent the last few days super busy…I finished my summer classes which means grading final papers and entering grades, Ronin had a baseball tournament when meant three games on Saturday, and Zoey sprained her ankle on the growth plate and is now in a boot. And of course, packing, packing, packing!
Which leads me to my question: How do you pack for six months in a foreign country across three seasons? We are flying Delta, which allows a checked bag, carry-on bag, and personal item for each person. For the five of us, that is a lot of luggage! We packed around 12 shirts (short and long-sleeve), socks, and underwear for each person and around 6-8 bottoms (shorts and pants) for each person. Then I needed to make sure I had appropriate ‘work’ clothes, we all needed some church clothes that are at least moderately dressy, and then all the shoes! I never thought I would be able to share shoes with my 9-year-old, but that has helped to save space. When we got through with all the clothes and shoes, lo and behold we still had half of our space left. So we added things like toys (each child got a gallon sized baggie for toys), the kids’ two favorite stuffed animals and favorite blankie, books for work for me and books for school for the kids, and miscellaneous items. Because our apartment does not have a TV, we have the Nintendo switches, several tablets, baseball mitts and balls for JonPaul and Ronin, leotards, bar shorts, and grips for Zoey, and cameras for everyone. We also brought some little gifts to give out to people in Hungary: some Woodford Reserve bourbon (from the distillery about 10 minutes from our house), Kentucky quarters, pencils with American flags to hand out at the schools I will be visiting, and UK stickers and magnets that I made with my handy dandy cricut. With the extra space, we packed some extra consumables that may be difficult to find in Hungary—peanut butter (two giant jars of Jiff), the kids’ favorite snacks, baggies, our favorite brands of toothpaste, no-tear shampoo, soap, wipes, and deodorant, and plenty of non-alcohol hand sanitizer because Ronin, Willow, and JonPaul break out with regular hand sanitizer. We even put our giant winter coats in vacuum-sealed bags, which we will most likely wear on our flight back home in January.
For the plane, each child has a backpack with their water bottle, journal, coloring book with twistable colored pencils (these are really cool—check them out), their favorite stuffed animal, tablet with movies, lots of snacks, and a sandwich baggie with 5-6 toys. Then we hope they will be allowed to carry their squishmallow pillow aboard; we brought the pillows on the airplane from Arizona at Christmas so I am hoping it won’t be too big of a deal.
I am so afraid of forgetting something, but the thing I keep forgetting is that they have stores over there! We will not go without, and in fact are bringing much more than I expected. Our adventure is only beginning!
