Gifts and Last Minute Details

Today I'm not feeling as stressed out as I thought I would be. I sat at Ryan and Joy's last night and we went through all of our luggage and what we are packing/were thinking about packing. They helped me feel a lot better about what I had shoved into my suitcase. I thought I was overpacked, but I've done fairly well! My suitcase feels like it weighs over the limit of 70 lbs, but when I made Nate step on the scale with it, we found out that it only weighs 46 lbs. This made me realize that I am going to be able to fit A LOT of stuff in there on the way home...

A lot of the bulk comes from the gifts we bought to give to the families and teachers we will be working with:

Paper, pencils, crayons, eye shadow, nail polish, and other goodies...

We split them three ways so we can carry more. We are also bringing some Barnes and Noble classic titles for the English department at Universite Cheikh Anta Diop that were donated to us by my school district's generous library services. Then, I had a random thought this morning about the gifts. I asked myself, "Hey Jen, you winner... did you think that maybe the teachers might need some pencil sharpeners since you got them boxes of unsharpened pencils? Duh." I went to Target and got a few of those today. ;)

I also went to Goodwill and bought all of the t-shirts that said WMU on them. It will be cool to see some of the college students at Universite Cheikh Anta Diop wearing them. :) Of course, I also included some Kalamazoo Central shirts because I think the staff there who have been so supportive of this trip would like to see some students wearing our shirts! I wanted to include some of these shirts:

But they were just too expensive. Dang.

This morning I ran around town getting some last minute things I need. I went cheap last month and bought a money belt from Walmart (ughhhhh, why) for $7. I tried it on and it felt like I was rubbing a prickly and furry animal right up against my skin. So I bit the bullet today and bought a silk money belt from Lee's for $25. I tried it on and it is much better and I have a feeling it won't make me break out in a rash.

And hey, speaking of rashes, the horrible allergic reaction hives on my face are pretty much gone. I got an extra prescription of steroids in case they decide to come back while I'm gone. I was pretty miserable for a few days!

All right, I've gotta bite the bullet again and go get my H1N1 shot. I really don't want it because I've never had a flu shot, but it was highly recommended to me since I get sick every time I get on a plane. Boo.

I'll leave you with a taste of how I've been trying to shove five weeks of summer into one week:

What you see here is a little bit of Pride Fest 2010, a little open house action, some punk rock, and my dog in a laundry basket. Nice.