Top 5 Things to Pack for an International Trip
During my study abroad trip, I learned that these were some of the most important items that either I or other people on the trip realized were essential while abroad.
Different Types of Clothing
One of the first things I learned was you need a variety of clothing for the trips. As you travel around, you’re not sure how the weather will change. You should pack in light layers, so you can add when needed. Having a light jacket and even a comfortable rain jacket will never be an over packed item that you won’t use.
Storage Bags
Secondly, to make more room in your suitcases, I found that buying largely sized no vacuumed needed storage bags for my clothes that do not wrinkle. All you have to do is seal the bag, then roll all of the air out of it. The large sized really helped me (over) pack for the trip so that I did not have to worry about washing clothes halfway through the trip. On my trip personally, my friends and I only found one pubic laundry place close to our hotel to where we did not have to take a car service or anything to get to it. This was an inconvenience for a couple of people on the trip as they thought there would possibly be some in every country we visited.
Tide Stick
On to the third item, and this may sound weird, but a Tide stick saved my (and a lot of my friends) life on the trip. I wore a yellow sweater to a dinner one night and spilled red wine all over it. I had my Tide stick with me, and the whole spill came out! Also, if I had spilled something on jeans or on my business attire that I had planned to re-wear for another day, the tide stick got every single stain out. Making more room in my suitcase for other necessary items.
Adaptor for Electronics
The fourth thing to have is an adapter for the country(s) you’re traveling to. You may think that someone else will have an adapter you could borrow, but on my trip, quite a lot of people thought the same thing. I almost never had my adapter as I was trying to help everyone else who did not. Having this adapter will take off some unneeded stress and anxiety you will possibly have about traveling abroad.
Medicine
The last thing that I ended up having a hard time finding abroad was cold medicine. Almost everyone on the trip I attended got sick at some point. The weather is so different from how it is in the states. Trying to communicate your symptoms to someone in another language is very difficult. I had a sinus infection starting while we were traveling but, in the country we were staying in, they described it as hay fever. I had to sit down and google my symptoms and how they would describe it in the country we were staying in. Not to say it wasn’t an experience, it was just quite difficult to describe this when I could have had the medicine and took it as soon as I started to feel under the weather.
