Bon Voyage!

That's it. Done. After 3 days' effort, lots of squashing and numerous "oh s*@!$- WHERE'S MY PASSPORT?!!??!!" moments, 7 months has been squeezed into a rucksack and is ready to go. The size of it is infuriatingly deceptive - it's so enormous that I've no idea how I'm going to lift the damn thing, but despite its titanic size, there's still not enough room to hold all my stuff without lots of pushing and pulling with the zips (let alone have space for everything I want to take). Shame. It's too big for the bathroom scales, so I'm just hoping it's under 23kg. Very, very desperately hoping.

I fly to London at 10.35am tomorrow, and will be on the 6.05pm flight to Johannesburg. We'll land in Windhoek, Namibia's capital, at lunchtime on Friday. On Monday, our host from the school will be coming to pick us up and take us to what will be our new home until August.

It seems crazy that after months of saying "January", "January", "January" whenever I think/others ask about it, it's tomorrow. As in, less than 24 hours. It all kicks off TOMORROW. I'd just like to say thank you so very much to my friends and family for all of their support, sponsorship and enthusiasm for what I'm doing here: soppy, I know, but I can't leave without saying so. Thank you dearly, farewell, and I'll post again once I'm on the other side of the world.