T Minus 9 hours, 50 minutes

And it's here: my last night in the US! It was a great weekend, with lots of time with the family and all my final "chores" getting done. We had a fabulous meal tonight of goat cheese manicotti with homemade tomato and roasted red pepper sauce, green beans, salad and orange collards. Yum! The whole family was here: mom, dad, Remi and Liz. It was perfect!

As promised, here are my packing pictures. I have the terrible feeling I've way overpacked, but for the life of me I couldn't cut anything out. I'm sure I'll shed on the way, but to start out, I'll be fully prepared!

First up: Clothing.

Top row, left to right: shoe bag (tennis shoes, flip flops, sandals), 2 pr pants, 1 pr shorts, fleece, hats.
Middle row: Skirt, nice shirt, dress, pareo, scarf, nice scarf, silk long underwear, warm undershirt, windbreaker.
Bottom row: 4 t-shirts, 4 tank tops, pajamas (shirt/shorts), light long-sleeve cotton shirt, vacuum bag of underwear/socks/bras/bathing suit

Next up: Stuff.

Top: Day pack (green) and regular pack (blue) with neck pillow attached
Left half of bed, from top: first aid kit (tupperware), toiletries, books, pencil bag (holds journals and important papers), netbook and neoprene sleeve, power adaptor, camera batter charger, cell phone, external hard drive, iPod touch, passport bag, electronics bag (black, white and red bag), eye shade, squishy cups, tissues, travel purse, munchies (dried fruit, Cliff bars, snickers bar), travel towel, soft socks (for airplane, to be discarded), belt.
Right half of bed is all the clothes, rolled

 And finally: Packs, packed.

The only thing not shown is the neck pillow, which will be strapped to the outside of my blue pack. 

The bags are fairly heavy. My estimate is that the gear pack (blue) is about 30-35 pounds and the day pack (green) is about 10-15 pounds.

I plan to shed the airplane socks, two books and of course the munchies, fairly quickly (within a few days/one week of arrival). As for everything else... we'll see!

Tomorrow dad will take a picture of me with my pack(s) on and I'll post that later.

For now, time to get some sleep, if I can, and enjoy my last night in a familiar bed.

Whew!

--Z