Oh boy, my first post.

Hi all -

Here is my first entry, although probably not the most interesting of posts I will make, I thought I would at least get this thing up and running and play around with uploading pictures etc. Anyway, here ya go:

So, I'm just a few short days from my departure to Costa Rica and I'm really excited. I'm also feeling a little bit of pressure (from one friend of mine in particular - English major, quirky sense of humor and relatively high standards in terms of textual entertainment - you know who you are...sorry to all of you that don't know this reference/person and had to suffer through this parenthetical notation, it's over now) to have an entertaining, unique blog for you all - I hope I won't disappoint!

Anywho, I thought I would share a little bit of the packing/preparation process I went through the week leading up to this trip. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately if any of you would have been offended by pictures of my room in a state of utter chaos - it was pretty scary stuff),  I did not have the time or foresight to take pictures during the nitty-gritty of my packing process. The main highlight was really just my bed with a foot-deep layering of clothing/equipment that I somehow needed to narrow down and then fit into my designated luggage.

This is what I managed to document for you all:

Me weighing my bags to see if they are under the 50 lbs. weight limit.  Luckily, they were! Also, if there were any doubts before,  I believe this picture fully dispels any notion that this is either a high fashion or an artistic photography blog (in terms of fashion, my defense is that all my non-embarrassing pajamas were packed away...)

Although probably not that profound of an idea,  I was proud of my strategic packing - socks in my Nalgene bottle.

The present for my host family wrapped in an article I found about my high school in the paper and a Carolina blue ribbon. The present is a little art cube I found at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It's difficult to describe, but basically it is a cube that you can unfold and refold in different ways, and each face and combination of faces reveals different paintings by Edward Hopper.