Not a Pirate of the Caribbean: I Never Want to See My Luggage Again

‘Alo!

Now that I finally unpacked my room on Sunday, I feel more equipped to talk about packing and travelling. For travel to a tropical environment in the summer it is rarely necessary to wear warm clothing… ever. See, I knew this but I thought, “Hey, maybe it will get cold at night.” I was wrong. Going off of the recommendation of bringing clothes you can layer, I brought a sweater, a fleece, a very light jacket, and a long sleeve shirt. These things are now packed in a space bag ready to return to the States along with a pair of pajama pants and a pair of sweat pants that I can’t visualize wearing any time in the next five weeks. This brings me to my first set of packing tips.

1.Buy space bags

a.You will save a ton of space in your suitcase

b.More importantly, you can put almost half of your clothes in a backpack (if you get the right

sizes in space bags) and use it as a carry on that will have no weight limit and allow for other things in your bag. Also, if your bags get lost, you will have clothes

2.Look at the most extreme possible weather you could experience and bring only one piece of clothing to suffice that need. Everything else should be fit to the average temperature. The worst thing that could happen is that you have to wear something more than once, but I would have honestly preferred that much more than having 10 pounds of extra useless weight in my bag.

3.Don’t bring things that are not tough enough to maintain their own shape. Seriously, I would be happy to never see this darn woven hat again while I am lugging around nearly 100 pounds.

Travelling has been crazy and I was so glad to hit the ground in Santiago and realize I wouldn’t have to do it again for six weeks after customs. Customs in the Dominican Republic are a piece of cake. I was expecting a torturous experience, and maybe American customs will be, but I have weeks before I have to worry about that. Of course, all of it is in the back of my mind with each purchase. Packing, luggage weight, customs allowance are all floating around… in addition to the fact that more packing will happen as soon as I get home to leave for Mount Pleasant. This is a new worry on my mind because I just got a job on Monday and need to start training July 16^th. Are my Dominican Republic belongings enough to start life in an apartment? No, probably not.

After a very long wait at the airport after spending the night before catching some sleep on the floor at JFK (Yes, I live a glamorous life), I reached my home stay at 4:30 PM. This was my first experience with “Dominican time” as I arrived at the airport at 11 AM and was supposed to be picked up at 1 PM by ISA. Here they tell people that they need to be there at American time if they want to have them there on time. Clearly whoever invented this term hasn’t met my family. The must have forgotten to put (TD) next to the pick-up time, but did give me time to get to know some of the people in my group. We gradually found each other by the ISA luggage tags and because we all looked American. I was very nervous to meet my host family, but they quickly offered me Coca-cola and hot duck (which I later realized was a hot DOG, not duck).

Here’s a couple parting packing tips and some pictures. If you are not planning on studying abroad and this post has completely bored you, hopefully you will enjoy the pictures. Next post will be about Puerto Plata, so stay tuned!

4.Wear/bring things that you won’t need to bring back. A lot of us brought clothes and other things that are on the verge of falling apart. We plan to leave those things here to make room in our suitcases for souvenirs and replacements. I hope not to bring back any of the toiletry items that I brought here if I am able to use most of it. My only warning is to be careful that your things will last as long as you want them because you might end up having to buy a replacement that you don’t want.

5.This is a small thing, but I would recommend bringing scissor and tape. These are two things that I don’t have, but have asked for several times. It would be nice to have my own.

Don’t exchange money at an exchange house or the airport. You will pay a fee, you will get ripped off.

6.You can talk to local banks and find out if they have or can get the currency you want. I would suggest only exchanging enough for your first week then waiting to exchange the rest until you find a bank at your destination. Odds are very high that they will take US dollars.