Packing and Paris

One large green backpacking backpack
One smaller yellow day pack
Plus 35 kilos of stuff
= All the stuff I am carrying with me through Europe to Africa.

Before you start to wonder too much about if I might have suddenly become a material girl that just couldn’t do with our her whole wardrobe for the summer, I would like to present a few facts in my defense. Most if not nearly all of the weight is for my time in Kenya. The clothes are a small fraction of the weight and would probably all fit in one of those wheeling carry-on type bags. I am an expert packer so a lot of stuff can fit in a very small amount of space but it takes a lot of clothes to reach 35 kilos. I would venture to say that much of the weight in my bags will either be consumed over the summer (soaps, medication, batteries, etc.) or simply be left in Kenya (books). This will be to make room for souvenirs and such.

The hardest part in packing for this trip was the 2 distinct types of destinations that I am visiting. Put in a different way, the types of clothes I would normally want to wear in Paris are not exactly the same ones as I would normally wear hiking around the jungle. The second problem that I had in packing for this trip was not exactly knowing what I would be doing in Kenya and what the most appropriate clothes might be for those activities. I have a general concept of what I might be doing but since it is a mix of visits to villages, hospitals, and working in an office it didn’t really help me solve my clothing problem. I think I found somewhat of a compromise between office and field clothes, though neither of them would have been my first choice in what I would wear in Paris this week.

So I have been wandering Paris the last few days looking a bit more like a tourist then I would like but since I have been trying out my new digital camera I kind of do look like a tourist. Thankfully a lost French tourist made me feel a bit better yesterday by asking me for directions. I must have looked like I knew where I was going and maybe looked a little French too. I arrive in Paris late Thursday and spent some of Friday and Saturday just wandering around this city that I love. The weather has been a bit grey so not ideal for picture taking but also not to warm so ideal for street wandering. I would say that in general I have a pretty good sense of direction and in Paris I can usually get to where I want to be without looking at my map more then once. Yesterday, though, I was truly just wandering for much of the afternoon but those rare moments when I really wanted to be going in a particular direction my internal GPS was a bit off. My friend, that I was strolling in the Latin Quarter with in the late afternoon, can attest to this as a few times I was convinced the river was in the complete opposite direction then it really was. Thankfully, she lives in that neighborhood and was kind enough to point me in the right direction without making me feel like I had completely lost any of the Parisian traits that I once had when we were in school together here.

There is something about this city, even in the spring when it might seem a bit overrun with tourists. This city to me has a little bit of magic in it that can best be found just walking around the streets or sitting on a bench or at a café for awhile. There is amazing artwork in the museums here and hundreds of years of history at every turn, but the spirit of this city lives in the everyday. Paris to me is the smell of the bakery in the morning, the market stalls, having a crepe from the vendor down the street, finding a café for people watching and nice chats with a friend, and just being able to stroll through the streets enjoying the fell of it without having to pull out your camera to capture the moment. That is Paris to me.