Lessons Learned- vaccines aren't cheap and apartments can be hard to find

Please ignore my embarrassing face in the image clip of the video. 😂 My first video blog entry! What a crazy busy week it has been in preparation. 15 days to go! I learned the hard way that I can only upload one minute of a video clip on here, so my plan to share more live is thwarted for now, and I'll talk about it through text.

First off, vaccines can be very expensive! My program suggested that I get the Hepatitis A, Typhoid, and Yellow Fever vaccines, and I finally got the last of the bunch. I searched all through the CDC website suggestions, but only found that Passport Health travel agency had the Yellow Fever vaccine. I was so excited to get the yellow WHO card!

Searching for the “right” apartment was a journey! I wanted to find somewhere close to the center city, in a safer neighborhood, and with apartment-mates close to my age. My host professor suggested a few apartment ideas, and I reached out to an undergraduate she had listed to possibly having housing. With luck, the student is so incredibly nice, and also an English major! There are two other apartment-mates, who are a little bit older, but also seem like they will be nice. The apartment is between the large city lake and the city center, which makes it very easy to go for a run around the lake or take a bus into the city.

Things are shaping up, and there are just a few more things on my list that I need to do in the last week. For example, I can’t get my long term medicine prescriptions until the week before and I need to call my banks to let them know I’ll be abroad. I made the mistakes of not notifying my banks when I went to Fiji two years ago, and lesson was learned!