Stuff

4600 cubic inches sounds like a lot in the store, especially when you thought you were going to be taking a bag that was only 3300 cubic inches.   Rodney is taking the 3300 cu. in. bag and I get the heavy, bigger one.  Neither is spacious.  The thing that truly saved us was compression bags.  Seriously, this can not be overstated, we would bringing 40% less stuff without them.  Also, I am down to 3 pairs of shoes for the year (yesterday there were 5).

We are already looking forward to ditching such Mongolia specific items as Clif Bars, peanut M&Ms and "toys for the children".  The food is supposed to be awful (a lot of boiled meat), and apparently, the Mongolian Nomadic children get psyched for Western toys.

After much debate on that front, we ended up going with a ten-pack of Matchbox cars and ten tiny cans of Play Doh.  These were far and away the best (and most economical) choices at Target. 

It's hard to know what's going to be useless when you're going away for this long, and it's hard to know how out of civilization we're going to be.  In Mongolia we will be as far from anything as one can be, but we're going with a tour in a jeep, so we expect they will have any emergency items on hand (we brought our own in case they don't).  From there, we head to Beijing.  I'm guessing as major a city as New York or Tokyo, but in the Chinese countryside???

At this point, I'm just glad that my bag is closed.  Now we just have to shoehorn Rodney's stuff in 3300 cu. in.