Since May, our lives have been a fury of preparation.
Semester At Sea provided us with guidelines as to what to do when in terms of class and field program registration, payment schedules, pre-voyage preparation, shots required. No worries there. BUT what about the rest of our life? Decisions about crazy "life" stuff like: To rent or close the house up? How and where do we store our vehicles? How do we take care of paying bills while we are gone...mortgages, insurance, electricity? Do we have a generator installed to safeguard our house? What do we do with our mail? What phone plan do we choose? Who will snow-blow the driveway and take care of the garbage can so it doesn't blow into Canada?
T minus 7 days and we head to Boston for Christmas with the family, fly to San Diego with enough time to collect ourselves and participate in pre-departure meetings before heading to Ensenada to board the MV Odyssey, our home away form home for 3 months.
So below you will see the piles of clothes, water bottles, medical supplies, etc. in various stages of packing. We are allowed 2 checked bags and 1 carryon duffle bag and a carryon personal item.
So, we are mailing flat rate boxes to our San Diego hotel so we don't need to lug them onto Dartmouth Coach, through the T station. They will be tied together and be one of my checked bags....hopefully none of them will be coming back home with us in May.
Today we sealed the boxes. To the post office tomorrow. Huge sigh of relief.