Still getting ready

This post by Matthew Little was originally published at Diary of a Deckie: My experience volunteering on a hospital ship.

Still getting ready

 and I leave (with my parents, Stuart and Lynne) in three weeks, to fly to Texas for the confusedly named  ‘On Boarding’, as we don’t actually get aboard the ship until we fly from Texas  to Conakry, Guinea in November.

We are all still getting ready, which, for me, means tidying-up my bedroom by throwing away useless tat (as my dad would probably call it) that are no longer useful to me or have been left on my desk or shelves for years underneath piles of slightly more useful stuff. Somewhat related, this has also meant buying more stuff. Stuff that I am going to take, that is. However, I both know what I want to take, but at the same time,  I don’t. For the things that I do know what I want to take with me is clothes. (Obviously. Clothes are essential, Clothes are basically the priority), and my few technological devices, which are, my Laptop, my Samsung Galaxy Tab A and my PS Vita (the Xbox is staying at home, but all four of my devices I am taking have the capability to play games. The fourth item being my phone) There are some books that I am yet to read, both fiction and not fiction. Or books that I want to restart, those being The Hobbit, which I think I have restarted twice, but never finished, and a biography on the Knights Templar. (The REAL Templars, not the fictitious Templars from Assassin’s Creed. They are vastly different).

As for the things I don’t know what I want to take are what clothes I want to bring. I have finally started practising packing, which has made my mother happy, which has given me some idea of what of my clothes I will bring. What makes it difficult is thinking about the climate that I will be living in for 10 months, and what will be suitable clothing items. Especially since my two favourite t-shirts are black.

Other things that I have done to get ready are: Put a bunch of movies onto an external hard drive,  set up this blog, set up my YouTube channel to upload vlogs, (Check it out, I have put up a short film I made!) and shifted my payment methods for Playstation and Microsoft from my parents too me. And verified that I am adult with Microsoft. I am starting to think that these things probably shouldn’t have been my priority, but the only time I could really start packing is this week and next week, otherwise I would have been living out of a suitcase for a few weeks.

I guess all I can do now is to actually pack, wait till Friday (21st September) and leave.

(Note the time difference, this one post took three weeks to complete)