Eighty pounds of luggage and 5 trips to R.E.I. later...

I'm heading to Philadelphia tomorrow for "staging," which sounds like a six-hour orgy of paperwork and vaccinations. Then we'll check out nice and early (2:30am) to catch a flight from JFK to Malawi on Saturday morning. This may be the last you hear from your LooBird for a while; during pre-service training, I won't have access to phone or email. So, for the time being, and til late November, just remember that no news is good news.

But wait! I will still be able to receive and send snail mail, which, though super slow, is better than no mail at all. So, please do keep in touch and let me know how things are going because I will be missing you all very much. In a related note, I am very grateful for all the sweet goodbye gestures, and Mas dinners, and homemade dinners, and taco runs, and baseball games, and trips to the park, and general good times I've shared with the people I love this month.

Au revoir,
Loo

Things you might send, if you want to send me things.

Annie’s Mac and Cheese (shells and white cheddar)

powdered drinks (not a huge fan, but apparently they make the water taste better)

chocolate

snack bars: I like Cliff, Luna, and SoyJoy

spices and flavor packets (and cheese!)

pictures of you

The Economist, New Yorker, or similar magazines

dried fruit or other delicious nonperishable items

NYT or WaPo crossword puzzles

movies

games

music

novels

A special note for my pork-minded readers: bacon is perishable, so don’t mail it. Also, I hate to say it, but bacon (in its kitschy forms) jumped the shark in late 2008 or maybe earlier. And, while I would never dain to abandon the occasional blissful moment of porcine excess, you don’t really need to send me that bacon-striped mumu or bakon vodka or whatever it is you just couldn’t resist. Seriously. Unless of course you were thinking of sending bacon butter toffee, which is just simply and undeniably delicious.