Vacating

Yesterday was my last full day on the Luther College campus for a year or so. I'll have to stop by once more in the next couple weeks to tie up some loose ends, but I'm essentially done with my responsibilities there for the 2010-11 school year, and can turn full attention toward Nottingham.

A meeting with Luther's director of Global Education (the new name for the Study Abroad office on campus) revealed the secrets of my budget in the UK and the in-s and out-s of the banking set up there. The challenge is to feed 14 people and to pay rent, utilities, tuition, transportation and fees for all programs on a fixed number of pounds.

I also vacated my apartment in Decorah yesterday, and the keys have been turned in. I always thought of myself as just camping out there, with very little beyond necessities of furniture or other "stuff," and yet it was amazing how many loads of "stuff" had to be removed, and how empty the place became when all was gone.

We humans seem to collect ridiculous numbers of this world's goods along the way. Traveling light is never as easy as it would seem. This has been underscored even more at home, where 26 years of accumulated belongings are still being sorted -- some packed, many discarded.

Nevertheless, it's daunting to consider how much remains to be done in these next few weeks. Hopefully, Icelandic volcanoes or other eruptions will not hinder progress.