T-Minus four days until Peru.

And what an insanely busy two months it was leading up to this trip.  I can barely contain my excitement at the thought of this grand adventure, especially with the culmination of the 8-week ruckus– a move.  With the help of four fantastic boys, my apartment was cleared of all of my belongings and transferred into my boyfriend’s place.  I scrubbed my old apartment to sparkling clean and left the keys on the counter, saying a secret goodbye to the obnoxious neighbor’s dogs and the suspicious lady next door.

After vaguely organizing a few boxes for storage to clear the living room, I set to bleaching the bathroom (four boys and a cat live here too) to an appropriate clean for a lady, before creeping my clothing into his closet.  We will have exactly one week in this apartment before our flight takes off from O’Hare, which means some seriously fast-paced organizing and bag packing.

Luckily, we were able to take a break to visit the Baha’i Temple in Wilmette, all thanks to a sleep deprived mix up.  It was dark and oh so uncomfortably suburban on the walk from the train to the temple.  We crossed paths with some sleepy deer and other wild life before this gigantic building came into view.  Lights soaked the white stone as we walked through the garden and up the expansive stairs to the entrance. It was still open, around 9.45pm, so we walked around the inside of the temple admiring the intertwined quartz designs. It was a totally unexpected and awesome site, which made me all the more giddy for the adventure on the horizon.

Amongst all of these great changes was our trip to the travel doctor.  I knew that we both needed to get the yellow fever vaccine, because we plan on visiting the rain forest near Puerto Maldonado, however little did I know that our consulting doctor would recommend a painful cocktail of two other shots, a malaria regime and an antibiotic, just in case.  The ‘cocktail’ was painful for two reasons; it hit the pocket book quite deep and we ended up with two sore, needle-poked arms to boot.

Regardless of the dual pain, it was a necessary precaution to ensure that neither of us get sick while on our trip.  As much fun as planning the itinerary or even picking out exactly the right socks to pack, health is an important factor to consider when traveling.  Thankfully, both my boyfriend and I are of the healthy, mostly athletic sort, so we are able to get around easily.  Preventing unnecessary illness is therefore of the utmost importance.  I cannot wait to share my adventures with you from Peru next week (while not worrying the least about any pesky mosquitoes).