Leaving Tomorrow!

Flight 1
Toronto to Amsterdam,
Departing Monday, May 4 at 17:45, Arriving Tuesday, May 5 at 07:00

Then, I thought I had a 1.5 hour stop over, but apparently that's incorrect. It's 3hours and 15 minutes. But that's okay because I heard Amsterdam has got a really nice airport.

Flight 2
Amsterdam to Nairobi
Departing at 10:15 and Arriving 19:05

I think with time changes that I've got 18 hours or so from Toronto to Nairobi. I hope the food they serve is delicious! Also, KLM serves ice cream on intercontinental flights. The best!

Packing List Part 3: Hygiene

This was a difficult part of the packing list because I don't want to bring too much of anything, but I don't want to bring not enough. So for the past month, I've been monitoring how much of each hygiene product I use, and now I'm packing that amount multiplied by three.

Liquid Items:

• 2 in 1 shampoo/conditioner (one full regular sized bottle)
• deodorant (1 new one plus 1 half used)
• facewash (I still have not decided how much is an appropriate amount. Will I be washing my face more or less often?)
• Purell (jumbo bottle plus one travel sized container)
• toothpaste (1 new one plus 1 half used)

Dry Items:

• quick dry towel
• tampons (I'm over estimating and bringing like 70, but imagine running out?)
• Blistex (the one with SPF 15)
• tooth brush (and a fresh one)
• pre-wrap
• a few headbands
• lots of hair elastics
• tweezers
• nail clippers
• Q-tips
  

(Packing List Part 1: Medicine)
(Packing List Part 2: Comfort Items)

Packing List Part 2: Comfort Items

Criteria for comfort food: is delicious and/or nutritious, is light weight.

• Crystal Light (3 months of only water is difficult)
• Instant Oatmeal (the high fibre, high protein variety)
• a few packets of hot chocolate (it gets cold at night!)
• Clif Bars (protein and fibre fiesta, basically)
• lots of gum
  

Criteria for comfort books/entertainment: high "time to digest":weight ratio.

• complete novels of Jane Austen (all 7 in one volume!)
• the book The Power of One
• the book Great Expectations
• a notebook
• a book of logic puzzles
• a calculator (is any item more comforting?) (plus I'm teaching math. so)
• iPod filled with all of my favourite songs plus some great podcasts
  

(Packing List Part 1: Medicine)

Going Away Party

On Saturday I had a bunch of friends over for a going away party. I really like my friends. I'm glad so many could come. They all said they'd follow this blog- so hi guys, you are great. Thanks for coming.

However, now that my farewells have been bade, it seems that departure date is even closer. I leave next Monday!

Today I take my second dose of Dukoral, and then on Saturday I start taking Malarone, my malaria pills. I have a lot of packing to do and still quite a number of items to purchase. I guess I'd better get going.

Appropriate Skirts!

Well, I went shopping for my appropriate skirts on the weekend.

Old Navy had some sweet sales. Here's what I picked up.


What's that you say? How fashionable and modest? I know, right?

Packing List Part 1: Medicines

Instead of studying for exams, I spent a lot of time over the past few weeks arduously compiling a packing list.

Kidding. Of course I studied a lot. Huge studying. Hi mom.

Anyway, I was at the mall on the weekend to try to find appropriate skirts. I noticed that Shopper's Drug Mart was having 15 times the reward points so I thought I'd pick up a bunch of items I'll be taking with me.

This list was compiled on the advice of my travel doctor, my regular doctor, and about 20 other bloggers. Thanks, internet! (That said, if you're going to Africa you should probably talk to your own doctor because I'm not a medical professional and blah blah blah no suing.)


Regular essentials:

• vitamin C
• Polysporin
• Band-aids
• Advil
• sunscreen
• bug spray
• aloe vera
• After Bite
  
• scissors

Special items for Africa:

• Gastrolyte (rehydrating crystals)
• Malaria pills (by prescription)
  
• Ciprofloxacin (by prescription)
  

Just in case section:

• Canesten
• Pepto-Bismol
• Immodium
• throat lozenges

And of course, I can't forget to pack photocopies of all prescriptions and my form that says I've been vaccinated for Yellow Fever.

Dukoral

Today was my first oral vaccine of Dukoral. It smelled delicious but tasted terrible. Also, I could feel it all the way down into my stomach. It was a strange sensation (in a bad way).

However, it came in a fun little bottle. Overall score: it's a draw.