1 post tagged “packing”

With no good reason. But I needed to let off some of my apprehension. This time next week I will be in Cluj-Napoca, Romania at the beginning of 9 day service trip I am taking with one other colleague and seven students from school. When I say it like that I can feel the value, importance, delight, excitement and incredible opportunity that this experience affords me and the students I am taking. But between now and departure my mind if mostly bleating with anxiety about the travel.

I have been to Canada and Jamaica. Otherwise, I have not been out of the United States and never across the ocean. I jumped at the chance to go on this trip because I thought it would give me a little taste of what international health work (a field I have always held out as the holy grail for me) might be like. Jetting off to a foreign country, working with an agency on the ground to try to build necessary infrastructure to support basic health needs and children and families. The latter part is still bright and shiny to me.  It's the jetting off that seems to be a problem.

I am not a particularly practiced or comfortable flier. I don't sleep well on planes and I wake up even worse. If I am not awake depressurizing my ears I wake up, dizzy, disoriented, out of breath and nauseous, not to mention the dry itch in my eyes the tackiness in my mouth. So I arrive tired and then the 1-2 combination is completed with a stiff slug to the stomach of jet lag. They are seven hours ahead of the east coast. Since I'm working next week, I don't get to try to reset.

Finally there is the packing for unpredictable weather. 'Romania is sort of like New England in March.'  Reassuring in that I know to expect anything.  A bit hard to deal with because the weather could be, y'know anything. That in and of itself is not so terrible. I just happen to be a horrible packer. I hate it. I dislike having baggage. It feels like a ball and chain. If I had my druthers I would go most places with the clothes on my back, comfort items, money and maybe one or two pieces of clean underwear. Get what I need there, ship it back to me or recycle it. I can't do that this time because I'm one of the adults. I'm one of the people who actually has to be prepared. Further I have to have appropriate items on hand in case the kids forget or need something. 

Mostly I'm not looking forward to being tired and uncomfortable (from jet lag and sleep deprivation) in an unfamiliar place. I feel like I already paid my dues in that category. I trust that the experience will be better than I fear and I do feel tremendously lucky to get the chance to go. But you know how fear is. Right, completely unreasonable.