Packing . . . and unpacking

I started pulling together some things tonight in preparation for going to New Zealand on Friday. Passport- check. Still in its little bag, accompanied by about 1500 Kenyan shillings (roughly 20 dollars) and my yellow fever vaccination card. They told me when I went in to get immunized that I wouldn't be allowed in to Kenya without proof of yellow fever vaccination. So I clung to that card as tightly as I did my passport- and no one ever even asked to see it. I doubt I'll need it to get into New Zealand, either.

Fancy-schmacy electrical adapter that claims to have a configuration for every kind of plug- check.

Camera- check.

Backpack- this is where the really embarrassing discovery is made. I never unpacked my backpack from the flight home from Kenya. Wow, all kinds of fun things in here. A little piece of cheap candy with a smiley face on the wrapper- must be left over from the day we brought candy for all the kids at the orphanage. An airline pillow, a kind of nasty looking container full of cookies, some little fudge bars from Nakumatt, the very tattered copy of the Conference edition of the Ensign and the little blue Book of Mormon that I took with me everywhere. A pair of really nasty socks, full of red Gathiga mud. Maybe I'll frame them to remind me how amazing that mud was. My sunglasses! I thought they were lost- nope. Just packed away in my backpack for the last six months. The little cheap alarm clock that I bought and used twice. The sun rose at 6:30 and the people were up with the sun right outside my window- not a bad natural alarm clock, really.

Wow. That was kind of fun, although I probably really should have done it a long time ago. Now its time to put away these things with their memories and make room for some new ones.