I picked up my laptop and searched for reasonable shipping prices.  That’s a lot of figures.   Maybe there would be a 99% discount?  No such luck.  And even at those prices, there was no way the books would arrive in time. I stared blankly at the paperbacks overflowing from my carryon bag and onto the hardwood floor.  I planned to take 200 books with me, but with the last-minute donations there were now one thousand. One Thousand. I didn’t know what to do.

There were only three days left before I landed in the villages of Karnataka to build an English library at one of the schools there. One School.  But when I called my chosen non profit organization, Arodhum International, about the extra books, they expanded the itinerary to five schools. Five Schools!   

I looked at the suitcase of my belongings.  Did I need all that?  I emptied the books in my carryon and stacked them into the largest suitcase I could find.  Checked luggage cost less than shipping.  This could work. Like 3D tetris the pieces started to fit together.  I slipped in the last novel and threw myself on top of the suitcase so the zipper could get all the way around.  My hands in the air, beaming, and I looked for someone to celebrate with.  Instead, I found 650 books staring back at me.  Peeved and possibly hangry, I decided to take a lunch break.  

As I headed to the kitchen, I heard a ping behind me.  I picked up my phone and found a message from the Arodhum group chat.  The Arodhum group chat!  My fingers flew as I sent off requests for luggage space.  “I can get rid of a pair of shoes!  I don’t need this jacket!”  The chat was inundated with support, and in hours, my doorbell was ringing.

Stack by stack, the books disappeared, and three days later they were in India.  When every book was accounted for, they were taped into boxes and labeled for the receiving school.  The libraries had made it to the other side of the world.