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Packing is a word that is filled with nervous anticipation. It implies that you are going somewhere, that there is an adventure that is about to take place. Packing is supposed to be fun. Or at least that's what I thought, but these last two days have taught me a very different lesson.
I have spent the last month stressing about my trip to New York. Now its not the fact that I'm going to New York on my own that I have been worried about (although this does have potential to be a stress inducing incident.) What I have been worrying about is my luggage. The problem is that I am going back to South Africa after New York and all my earthly possessions (those that are in the States anyway) have to come with me. So for the last month I have been telling myself that there is nothing to worry about and it will all fit in without a problem. Boy! Was I lying to myself and it's taken me the whole week-end to work this out!
I spent the whole of Friday sorting my things into three piles: the stuff that I didn't want, that which I wanted but would be ok to leave behind and the things that I did want to take with me no matter what. The first problem arose when I stood back to survey my day's work and discovered that the leave behind pile had nothing in it!
So I decided to try a different approach. I would pack as much as I could into my bags and then see what was left over. This would hopefully mean that I would get most of my things into my bags and with a bit of tweaking I might be able to bring home most of what I wanted. So I packed and I packed and I squished, rolled and folded things until I couldn't fit anything else in. once that was done I needed to close my bags up so that I could weigh them (this required me sitting on my bag so that the zipper would be able to close without everything popping out!) Next I went to fetch the scale and I managed to heave my bag onto the scale. My eyes popped out of my head and my brain went into stall. How on earth could my bag weigh so much?! And there was still stuff that I needed to fit in!
When my brain finally started working again I had to take a deep breath and I decided to unpack and see what I could get rid of. So after many, many hours and some heart wrenching decisions I tried the scale again. It had better be ok this time because I had discarded all my shoes (besides the pair I was going to wear) I had gotten rid of half of my clothes and all of my toiletries. There really wasn't much else I could discard. So I put my bag on the scale and held my breath…yes! I just squeaked into the weight limit, phew! Now all I need is for the airport scale to agree…
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