I'm going on an Adventure! (And this is how I pack.)

I’m taking a trip tomorrow! My main purpose is to visit a school this weekend, but I’m also going to spend some time just seeing the city and I’m extremely excited. It’s my first real vacation alone, and I’ve never been to New York before. This sounds like an excellent adventure, and is exactly the kind of thing I want to do while I'm young and poor and uninhibited.

I’ve been lucky enough to go on some pretty amazing trips in my life, but unfortunately, I didn’t appreciate most of them until adulthood. Vacations with my family were always An Event. You can’t mobilize 10-12 people, on a normal day or a holiday, without attracting a good deal of attention. Growing up, we were always mistaken for 1) a daycare, 2) a church group, or 3) a posse of estranged children. In our 12 passenger van, often with a full trailer attached, it’s no wonder we were a spectacle. To make our van look even more daycare-oriented, I recently found out that my mother had these custom license plates attached. I. Can’t. Even.

Once, at an airport, someone actually tried to enter our van thinking it was an airport shuttle. My family is wonderful, but as a preteen, I was not amused. I spent most of our vacations behind a constructed wall of blankets in my corner of the van, listening to my walkman and reveling in my teenage angst. Clearly, a lovely, positive child to be around.

My real ability to plan and execute a trip well was developed when Sara and I won a trip through writing an essay for our honors department to Geneva, Switzerland. Yes. That happened. This is the moment we found out:

Our lives might quite possibly have reached their peaks at 21. We paid almost nothing to stay in a fancy hotel, fly to a beautiful country, visit the UN, and explore every detail of Geneva. To do so, however, we had to plan a vacation in a country we had never seen, among people speaking a language (many languages, actually) we didn’t understand, in an unfamiliar culture. We’re best traveling buddies ever for life, so we did it with smashing success. I think what this experience taught me (aside from arguably being the apex of my here-to existence), is that I can travel well independently.

It’s only very recently, however, that I learned that I can enjoy traveling alone. I am not an alone person, but there’s a lot I want to see in the Boston area and not always someone to see it with. A few weeks ago, I visited Bunker Hill, and I realized I can still enjoy myself when seeing things without someone else. So, I’m going to New York. By myself. And I’m expecting traveling alone will only enrich the adventure.

I’m staying in a hostel and taking the bus, so I’m going to be carrying everything I'm bringing around every day. In general, I am a small purse girl. Although many women carry a purse this size around daily, my fragile old lady back, general laziness, and continual efforts to make my life less chaotic inspire me to carry only the essentials with me. Did you know that perusing the contents of other people’s purses is a thing? It's a thing. I think these exhibitions a bit of a lie, because I’d like to know what woman doesn’t have a pile of receipts waiting to be gone through or recycled in her purse, but it can be an interesting sociological display. In honor of carrying a large purse carefully packed for a very specific trip, I have laid out its contents for you. This is what I’m bringing:

In top-ish to bottom-ish order: Tales from a Traveling Couch and A Big-Enough God: A Feminist's Search for a Joyful Theology. My journal, which is the main reason I will be ensuring this bag does not get stolen, because it was handmade in India and I am in love with it. Organic goat's milk oatmeal facial soap. A scarf, because it’s actually winter here in the Northeast. Lip gloss. I recently lost my nice fancy Mary Kay lip glosses, and because I’m a very feminine girl who is also a borderline low-maintenance hippie, I have been without anything other than drag-queen-red lipstick to wear. According to basic lipstick rules for people like me, you’re supposed to go one or two shades darker than your natural lip color, so yesterday I bought a pretty, grown-up color (not super cheap) and a lighter, all the time color (super cheap). Nail polish, because what else are you going to do on a bus for four hours other than paint your nails? I love nail polish, and if you want to buy me something for Christmas, I'm in serious lust with this color. This one is pretty fantastic as well, because it’s like a party on your nails. I decided that in the pursuit of looking like a polished adult, lip color was more important than almost-black purple nail polish, so I’m trying to use black and purple as a somewhat-substitute since I’m too poor to splurge on nail polish. On another note, if you happen to have a desire to learn the most popular nail color by city, you can find that here. Nice taste, Dallas.

My camera and camera charger. Tank tops, because putting clean tank tops under my sweater is going to be my interpretation of wearing clean clothes every day. Razor, toothbrush, deodorant, moisturizer, body wash, toothpaste, a toothbrush, and eye makeup remover, for what should be obvious reasons. Gap bike shorts to sleep in, pressed powder, and snacks squirreled away from the conference I went to yesterday. My wallet with cards and ID (although I’ll actually be carrying that directly on my person, because technically, those are more important than my journal). “Colleges” composition book (Like my father, I make composition books to organize everything, from “Life Plans” to “Boston”). Cucumber lip smackers chapstick, because moisturized, tasty lips are always nice. Cliff bars, which I find disgusting, but they’re high-calorie and filling and I plan on severely limiting the amount of food I buy. I consider the fact that looking at them, writing about them, or thinking about them makes me nauseous to be a perk, because after I eat one I will save money by being unable to eat anything else. Lotion. Every medicine I might possibly need mixed into a cocktail, from vitamins to Excedrin. Underwear, because I’m not that much of a dirty hippy. “Essential” makeup. Cell phone charger. Headphones, although these are a bit superfluous because I apparently have the babiest earholes ever, and normal people headphones won’t stay in my ears unless I balance them very carefully and keep my head very still. They are included in case of an annoying bus buddy. My knitting, which is not only something to do on the bus, but is actually really good for your mind and body as well.

Heck.



Yes. (See that spray bottle? That's what I was squirting Alexander with all night.)



I apologize if going through the contents of my purse is extremely boring to you, but the only other way my purse would ever look when unpacked is like this:

And that’s sad, so that would really be unfair to me, if that’s the only purse I ever got to show-and-tell.

Although Alexander doesn’t know it, he is about to cross a very grown-up milestone of his own by spending three days at home alone. This is our pre-trip picture, which is not a quality photo, as it was taken as he was flailing about, breathing his fishy breath all over me, and making disturbing yodeling sounds like this. Since I was packing, he decided to be in full brat cat mode tonight, so after he gorged himself on all of his food (I bought food of the same brand but of a slightly different nature recently, and he won’t stop being a gluttonous fatty cat about it), he immediately began to repeatedly dig through the trash can and skitter crazily about the apartment. There was a lot of yelling tonight, and I’m having to buy new cat food before I leave tomorrow so I don’t come back to this.

It’s now 5:00 AM, and because I’m too irresponsible to sleep and am too excited to stop drinking coffee and typing, I’m still up. I’m going to go get my two hours of sleep (ugghhhh) and see if any of this post makes sense in the morning or if I’ve just typed out the words “New York, New York” over and over in a fit of hysteria.

Alexander is finally sleeping. My bag is perfect. I’m not going to miss any of my connections tomorrow. And in case I want to be a parking lot groupie, the middle school intern at work has informed me that Taylor Swift is in New York this weekend.