I’ve already told you all about my huge green suitcase that I arrived in the US with. I’d packed so many things that felt critical to my survival in a foreign country, like the poster of my favorite singer. But what I hadn’t thought of were the practical basics needed for daily life in college: anything from pens and notebooks to bedding and a laundry basket (at that point I actually hadn’t realized that laundry baskets existed in the world, my laundry had just always gone into a plastic bag that wasn’t specifically manufactured for that purpose but continued to serve it with a fair level of success regardless).
When I first moved into my dorm room, my roommate Rachel who had a car and who must have seen the look of concern on my face over not having said laundry basket was kind enough to offer to take me to Walmart on a shopping trip (the concern I had wasn’t really about the laundry basket but it was in fact about all the things I realized I didn’t even know I needed).
A Walmart is overwhelming on the best of days, let alone when you’ve never been to a Walmart nor have ever seen any kind of retail outlet on that scale. When I left Armenia in 2000 the country was only just starting its journey towards westernization: we didn’t have malls yet, there were almost no Western brand retailers. And until then I had been buying all my clothes from hawkers at bazaars or from a secondhand Goodwill store that did have Western fashions but from 10 years prior. My clothes shopping was relegated to one, maybe two, occasions a year, before each school semester, to make sure that I had more than one outfit to wear to school. This was a strategy that would allow me to have something to wear to school while laundry was being done.
Continue reading “Pack… Personal Care Items”
Packing List for Immigration 