The best advice is: travel as light as you can. Having to schlep heavy, unwieldy luggage can take the bloom off of an otherwise fine trip faster than just about anything this side of amoebic dysentery. During most of the traveling you do for your study abroad, there will be no one to help you with your luggage. Remember: much of what you will need abroad for your everyday life - e.g., clothes for everyday wear, toiletries, other personal items - can usually be acquired reasonably in your host country. Some good advice: Do your packing at least a couple of days before your scheduled departure. Then, get acquainted with your luggage by moving it around, e.g., from your car to the third floor of your house, or around the block. See how much difficulty and aggravation this occasions for you. If it occasions very much at all, lighten your load. Also, if at all possible, everything except your carry on luggage should either roll or go on your back.
Travel sections of bookstores are full of travel books that generally advise the international traveler about what to take. But, you will likely be much better off if you are in touch with your program, and students who have completed the program, about what specifically you will need to take with you, e.g., warm clothes or dress clothes or waterproof clothes or hiking shoes, and - often - specifications that particular items should meet. Because of differences in standard electrical current and conversion problems, your personal electric appliances (e.g., hair blowers, electric razors) probably will be useless over there. Insofar as possible, don’t take expensive items, e.g., jewelry. Just about certainly, you won’t need them, and having them with you is likely to occasion security concerns that you don’t need either. If you are thinking of taking a lap top, be sure to be in touch with your program about this. If you will be staying with a family, a wonderful way to get things off to a good start is to take for them a small, inexpensive gift or two (perhaps something evocative of the U.S., e.g., an American cookbook or a calendar with U.S. scenery or a non-perishable food item or an item of clothing with a Swarthmore College logo), as well as photographs of your family and friends and of some everyday situations at home.
Take a small sewing kit. Chances are, you’ll be real glad that you did.
If you do find that you are taking more than your airline luggage allotment allows, find out whether or not your airline will allow you to pay a luggage premium and take it with you. At the airport on the way out of the country is not the time to find out that your airline won’t accept everything that you have in tow. If you do this, it will aggravate the schlepping problem; but if the excess weight includes something that you really need or badly want, this is a reliable way of making sure you have what you need or want as soon as you get there. Surface shipping is not always reliable; and, no matter how reliable it is, it may be months before you and your cumber are reunited.
Finally, many of you will be going to non-English speaking countries with whose languages you have no familiarity at all. And most of you in this situation will begin work on the language of your host country when you get there. In some of these programs, you will - in (to me, and perhaps also to you) a surprisingly short time - become a functional speaker of the language of your host country. But regardless of this, when you get there you will - re language - be at square zero. For such situations, you can take something with you that will ease the initial transition; and that is the results of spending, say, ten to fifteen hours with tapes of the language of your host country during the few weeks before your departure. If you can manage this, you can reasonably expect two major dividends from your efforts: First, you will begin to get an ear for the spoken language, you will begin to get familiar with its sounds, and this will give you a big leg up in developing some speaking ability during the first couple of weeks in country. Second, you can equip yourself with a few phrases - especially, politeness expressions - for everyday use in your association with natives, e.g., members of your host family. When you get there, you likely will find yourself thirsting for any opportunity to be nice and gracious to your new hosts on their cultural terms. Ten to fifteen pre-departure hours with language tapes will enable you to slake this thirst.