Nine Days

Nine is a lot less than ten. I got a lot of folding and choosing and piling done yesterday, but still. Nine. It's a small number! I really cannot believe we will be leaving for the states in nine days. Three years (plus) is a long time to be away from a place. I was daydreaming the other day (actually, let's be honest, I was worrying. I was worrying about airline regulations that exist in other regions and whether or not we need to pack all liquids in our carry-on in a little ziploc bag and whether they have to be under a certain number of ounces, and whether or not you can bring a bottle of water through security with you. We don't worry about these things at our airport here. We're lucky if they actually have the metal detectors turned on. . .) so like I said, I was daydreaming about our trip and as I pondered about whether I could bring a bottle of water with me through security at whatever European airport we will fly through, the thought suddenly hit me--water fountains! We are going to the land of clean and drinkable tap water! And water fountains! I spent several more minutes on that idea. I acted it all out in my head. Packing my empty Nalgene bottle and at the first U.S. airport stopping to fill that whole darn thing up with nice cold water-fountain-water. Then I had this funny thing happen. I questioned whether that water really was safe. And whether we really should be drinking it. And then thought, nah, we'll probably not want Maya drinking that water, we'll probably keep buying bottled water, you never know who has been drinking out of that water fountain. . . Funny, huh? The things we grow to distrust, just because they are not our "normal". Pretty sure there's a good lesson in there about how we treat people who are not "normal". . . but I have to save any more energy for packing!