(Almost) ready to go

As I predicted in the last blog, I left the actual packing to the last minute! This was not only because I like to procrastinate on stuff like this, but also because it is something that I can do Sunday night, by myself. For anything where I rely on a shop or other people, I have to do it first, because most are not open Sunday, or only partially. Therefore other things took priority, like going to the hairdresser, to cut of quite a bit of my hair so that I don't overheat in Florida! I also had to do some shopping, since I miss Christmas, I want to be able to leave something behind which can be opened on Christmas day. Furthermore, most of my days this week were spent working. It felt like an end sprint, because if I was working at night, I was babysitting in the morning and if I was babysitting at night, I was working during the day. This way I'll have some extra money to spend on my trip, and I know exactly what I want, hopefully I'll get in on time and will be able to show you, so stay tuned! Lastly, I had some doctors appointment. The first was to do one final check-up on my ear... it has still not healed, and the hole barely got smaller, so in Florida I will need to take extra care and protect my ears very well. This was quite disappointing to hear, especially because I felt like it might have healed. Now there is a risk of infection if lake water gets in, and also because water will go straight to the inner ear, this can lead to dizziness, which is not great when trying to balance on the skis. My biggest worry is that I will fall on my ear again and make the hole bigger, because the chance of it healing naturally then, I think are close to nought. The other time I went to the doctor I got some antibiotics, to help fight my tonsillitis. I hope this will be completely over by the time I get to skiing, which will most likely be Tuesday.

This all, combined with going to the gym and hanging out with some friends before I leave pretty
much filled my week. Now I've only just finished packing all my bags and checking my equipment. I'm happy I checked my skis, because I had one problem with my slalom ski, which is fixed now, thanks to some help from my dad, and also all my screws match once again, because throughout the season I had gathered 3 different types of screws on my ski... Once this was done, I could put everything on the photo on the right into my ski bag. This only just fits in the weight limit, so I hope the scales at the airport are similar to the one I checked with!

Finally it was time to fit my clothes and other stuff into my other bag. Since my ski bag was allowed 32kg, I was able to put more of my ski equipment in there than usual (when it's allowed 24kg). Due to this I thought that my other bag could be 20kg, instead of 24kg, but I was wrong. I realised that I'll just try to take more stuff knowing that I have more kilos, but my bag ended up being 23kg. Since everything I'm bringing is absolutely necessary (probably not, but I couldn't chose what to leave out), I put some heavy things in my hand luggage to get the weight down. I now have the weirdest selection of items in my hand luggage (sorry airport security). I'm bringing all my ski bindings in my carry on, along with my sport shoes, slippers, a kilo of cheese and my own snacks. However weird my luggage may look now, I do have all my bags within the weight restrictions and am officially ready to go! I was actually ready to leave when I was biking to my friends house this morning in -3 degrees Celsius, but the only problem was of course that I had no bags packed yet...

Only 17 more hours until the plane leaves and I'm so excited to finish this year with some good results!