Tomorrow morning at 5:00 a.m., my colleague Chris Tsavatewa and I will set out with 12 students en route to Port Canaveral to board Carnival Breeze for a week of service learning activities in the Eastern Caribbean. Our GroupMe has been buzzing all day with packing talk. As a packing aficionado I couldn’t wait to weigh in (hmm, pun intended?) on the topic. Other than 2 sea days (one at the beginning and one at the end) we will spend our days in port doing volunteer work at organizations like the Humane Society and Salvation Army, so we don’t have to be too dressed up, but we also need some nice clothes for “elegant night” dinners and maybe the odd bit of swimwear. Here’s what I came up with and what I did with it:

My suitcase: low-cost-carrier carry-on size. It has lived a good hard life since I bought it in Paris in 2015 for practically no money.

T-shirts ahoy! Not pictured: one pair of jeans, which I’ll wear on the drive down tomorrow.

This is the largest number of swim pieces I have ever owned. I highly recommend a rashguard top (long-sleeve swim top as pictured on the left) if you burn easily or are at all concerned about sun exposure.

2 dresses, 1 pair of linen pants, 1 pair of linen shorts. The linen is already wrinkled but I dont’t think the dogs at Humane Society will mind.

Everything in the suitcase including toiletries, flip-flops, pajamas, and a sweater. Now for carry-on items:

Electronics and chargers (add to this my Olympus E-PM1 camera, which isn’t in the picture because I used it to take the picture)

Wallet, passport, headphones, keys, spare lipgloss, Milou folder (you should distrust people who call him Snowy) with travel docs and program information in it, another folder with some homework, and a Royal Caribbean lanyard which Chris assures me is okay to take on a Carnival cruise.

I have to throw a few things into the suitcase in the morning but overall I’m ready. Watch for more posts this week as I visit 2 new territories, one new country, and return to the Dominican Republic for the first time since 2017. I am excited but I think the students are at least twice as excited as I am!

P.S. Wouldn’t have forgotten these but I almost forgot to give them a shout-out: Sea-Bands! Maybe it’s “just” the placebo effect but seriously: THEY WORK.