Go day

Departure day is finally here. I get on my flight from Washington, DC tonight and will arrive at Buenos Aires at 10am tomorrow morning. The last minute details are mundane, but I had a bit of running around this morning, closing my bank account, visiting my credit union to withdraw some US currency, and to visit my dogs, whose ashes are buried at Folger Park on Capitol Hill. It's a bit emotional to leave them behind and I'll think of them often.

Mentally I am swinging between a high level of anxiety and excitement. I'm excited to get on the road and explore my new world, but also question if I've made the right choice to quite my job and head to a new country without any assurances of what I'll find. But c'est la vie.

I can't believe I managed to fit my life into a 70 liter and a 40 liter backpack. Except for a couple books and sweatshirts I left behind, everything else got in. Buenos Aires isn't quite the backwoods and I'll be able to get the common items while I'm living there, but I tried to take Rick Ridgeway's attitude regarding packing for a trip. When he and his team prepared for their trek across the Tibetan high desert, Ridgeway's mantra was " If we don't have it, we can't get it, and if we can't get it, we don't need it."

Next stop, BsAs.