Packing for Year Abroad

Packing was possibly the hardest part of preparing for year abroad; there were so many things that I would love to take with me as well as things that I needed to take with me and only 20kg to fit it into. The first thing that I had to decide upon was a suitcase to put it into; I couldn’t use one of my parent’s old ones as they were hard sided and weighed a few kg on their own. Also did I want to buy just a holdall bag that could be easily hidden away, didn’t want a suitcase lurking about taking up most of my room all year! I asked my landlady Ana and she assured me that there would be enough space in my room to store a suitcase. So I invested in a light weight suitcase to ensure that I could fit as much into it without going over the weight limit as possible.

I decided to start first with packing the essentials, but convinced that I would forget something (I always do) I decided that it was best to consult the internet, so off I went in search of a definitive list of Year Abroad necessities. I found some pretty detailed advice on www.thirdyearabroad.com which included lots of things that I hadn’t thought of, such as contact details for the local police, town hall, my landlady, university as well as a copy of all my important documents such as passport, EHIC, driving licence, university ID. On top of this a copy of all of the correspondence received from both Birmingham and Cádiz University about Year Abroad. I still hadn’t received my Acceptance Letter which was meant to be in the post but never arrived, so I decided that these extra communications could be important for registering with the University, which apparently required the acceptance letter. I also decided to take my counterpart driving licence in case I found that I was able to hire a car in Spain. I also registered with FCO locate (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/staying-safe/Locate/) which is a government run service so that they know to look for me should there be a natural disaster or something.

With all of the document necessities done I moved on to large functional items, such as my laptop, hair straighteners and adaptor plugs. These were things I either couldn’t or didn’t want to buy in Spain. My laptop had to be packed into my hand luggage so the first task was finding a hand luggage bag that was the appropriate dimensions to fit it into. I then ensured that I had all the appropriate wires etc as they may have been hard to come across in Spain. Instead of taking lots of adaptor plugs I decided to take only one and then buy an English row of plugs to attach to that, the row that I chose had USB ports attached as well so that I could charge my iPod etc without having to bring plugs. I also decided to pack an assortment of pictures from home to put on my walls to make the place feel more homely and of course to ward off home sickness.

Next came the toiletries, I packed travel sized everything apart from make up, I didn’t think that Spain would cater for such pale people when it came to foundation. There would be time to buy plenty of Shower Gel and Shampoo and Conditioner etc when I arrived, so I only took enough to last me a couple of days, no need to waste valuable luggage space!

Then it was time for the clothes, I decided to keep my heaviest items of clothing (jeans, walking boots, hoodie) to wear on the plane. The rest had to go in the case, I tried to take as much stuff that I could mix up as possible, I didn’t want to be wearing the same thing all of the time. I also tried to accommodate as many seasons as possible in the clothes that I took, just in case I didn’t have chance to re-stock until I visited home at Christmas. This took an awful lot of juggling, and now that I’m here I’m not sure that I got the balance quite right, but never mind, just an excuse to go shopping! I’m not sure that I really needed to bring my fleece blanket with me, yes I always lie under it on the sofa at home but I think in the 30 degrees Celsius heat here that I would have melted, so that has stayed in the wardrobe.

There was a point at which I was contemplating bringing two cases with me, but I decided against it as then I would have to transport them around, and I would have no excuse to do some extra shopping in Cádiz to add to my wardrobe back home. Not sure that is such a great idea as I haven’t decided how I will get it all home yet – but we shall see!