A Trip Within A Trip

Hello everybody!

I need to give an explanation on my current setting. I am sitting in the university of WashingtonTacoma campus quiet study room. I feel very studious and intelligent when really all I'm doing is fooling around on this old blog and taking the occasional snapchat. Oh well. 

The reason why I am here actually is because I am visiting some friends who live in Tacoma and I got this neat hook-up and through which I took a tour of the campus and a summary of its entire history with one of the professors (Thanks Yonn!). It is a beautiful campus and it's quite interesting because very few of the buildings were actually built for the university. Most of the buildings used to be old factories and train stations and hotels and stuff and the university took them and worked their magic. So it's a very pretty campus even though It's still being built and it is only about one third of the way done. Apparently it's only going to be fully built in about fifty years. I'll be a spritely old lady by that time, hopefully still exploring the world and taking full advantage of the lowered bus fare for senior citizens. 

Anyway so to circle back to the whole point of this post. I wanted to give a little insight into the routine I have built up around going away on trips. Traveling is a prominent theme on this gap year and I feel like I'm starting to get a little better at it. Let's put this into a list. 

Step 1. Write a list

What a surprise, I like listing things. But seriously, it is so affective. You can't go wrong, I divide my list into sub-headings, these being: toiletries, clothes, .entertainment, and other. 

Here is a picture of the list I put together for this little trip:

Step 2. Lay out all things you want to take on a surface 

My preferred surface is my bed right now because I don't have a massive amount of space on the floor. This is great because I can get a good feeling for all the things I've got and I can see if I'm missing anything. This also makes packing easier because you can be economical with space.

Step 3. The packing! 

You're almost done! Good grief, that was quick, you're probably saying to yourself right now. That's because you have a system my friends. As I said previously, you've got all your stuff in neat-ish little piles on the bed so now it's just a case of big things on the bottom, smaller things on top. My usual order is shoes first, then big things like jeans and jerseys and stuff, then lighter clothes and undies, then all the extras like books, toiletry bags, chargers ect. Once everything is neatly packed you're good to go. 

Of course it hardly ever works out so simply. On Saturday morning for example, my lift was at the door and I was still doing my hair and make-up so it was kind of like all hands on deck go go go and I may have adopted dad's strategy of "just throw everything into your bag in a shambles". Good for timing but not good for anything else really. Dad justifies this by saying that he's practicing for when it's time to pack up at the end of the trip and there isn't time to be too strategic but we both know the real reason: excreting minimal effort. 

My mode of transport to get to Tacoma was: bus. Cost effective and pretty easy, especially since I didn't have to swap busses anywhere. I'm not great at reading in moving vehicles which is unfortunate so I just make a playlist, plug in my earphones and relax. If you've got an Audiobook that works so well. If you've got Harry Potter on Audiobook that works the best just saying.

This was my view to and from Tacoma. (Sound is for Puget Sound, the body of water in Washington that comes from the Pacific ocean)

It is getting to the moment when I need to hop on a bus back to Seattle so I am going to have to love and leave you all. 

But before I do, I went to have my nails done and look how pretty they are! (Remember: it's spring here hence the bright colour.)

Featuring: Tanya's hand. 

Also, I felt like I can't go on without adding this pic:

This is me and Amara during one of our playdates (which are very much lead and directed by the little munchkin herself). Photo credits go to Tanya.

I hope you all have a wonderful week.

Until next time,
Jen x