There are a group of four islands here in Istanbul known as the Princes’ Islands.  Last week, Brian, Kris, Serene and I decided to head over to the biggest island and supposedly the best, Buyukada.  We had dreams of sandy beaches, warm sun and beautiful people.  We were way off…. Buyukada didn’t feel like an island, it look like a historical town.  It was still nice, the only modes of transportation are horse and carriage and bicycle.  It is clearly the land of the rich with big beautiful houses everywhere.  We took a nice stroll across the island and enjoyed a nice relaxing afternoon.  The only con is Buyukada is shitty….. literally…. there is so much horse shit and it reeks like butt.

As always, thanks to Tettix for the tunes.

Now I’m new to this whole traveling thing and already I’m running into mental battles royale.

After a little over a week in Istanbul, general ideas about Turkish culture have floated through my head causing me to make rather quick judgments on what the people are like and who they really are. I’ve noticed things like many of the people here are trustworthy yet not trusting, passionate as all hell about pretty much everything, and aggressive in their interactions yet extremely helpful. I’ve formed these opinions from different interactions with friends, a lover, and even street vendors, but the truth is I’m finding it exceptionally difficult not to sit at home at night and wonder if I even have the right to come up with so many general assumptions after only being here for a week.

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Many of you are probably wondering who I am, where I came from and what the hell I’m all about.  I put together the video below to try and answer that for you.  It includes advice from some of my amazing friends, my views on embarking on this new adventure, and a fairly typical camping trip just days before my departure.  It also showcases me adopting a Jet Set Zero approach to budgeting – instead of taking a flight from the local airport in Victoria, BC, I chose to save a couple hundred bucks by taking the cumbersome ferry off the island on which I live, and doing the public transit thing with all my gear to make it to the airport on the mainland.  Enjoy!

As you can probably all imagine, leaving home is never an easy thing to do. Some people get frustrated with the actual details of packing up their belongings and attempting to squish their life into a suitcase/backpack that can be easily maneuvered, others have a hard time leaving friends, and some just have a hard time leaving their routine.

Well, I had a pretty hard time with all of these, but saying goodbye to the friends I had made in LA was the hardest of all. The recording studio I worked in had become a second home for me. The majority of my best friends were my coworkers and we all hung out together in our spare time despite the fact that we were usually spending about 60+ hours a week working anyway.

I had far too many porch parties at work with all my coworkers at Conway... They usually looked something like this.

I had other good friends outside of work that I will miss just as much, but the ties that I had at work were something that will never be forgotten.

LA quite honestly rocked my world and I’m going to genuinely miss it. As excited as I am to be a part of the Jet Set Zero team, there will always be a piece of me sitting in Los Angeles. It was never the dazzling lights of Hollywood, the fake styrofoam Grammy statues (yeah, those made me laugh, a lot), or the rockstars, it was all about the people I’d met on the sidelines. Sitting in a dark deserted bar bullshitting about the stupidest things somehow became one of my favorite activities because I love people, stories, and well, beer.

The Short Stop - Best Local Bar Ever.

My lovely ladies...

So here’s a little taste of my last day in what I frequently called Lala Land, and how I felt about joining the team literally hours before departure. You even get to see my last beer, which as I mentioned is always pretty cool in my book.

I know I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog the last couple of weeks so here I am.  The purpose of Jet Set Zero is tell the coolest, most amazing travel stories.  Well I’ve been in a bit of a slump and it’s hard for me to fake being super excited when I’m very clearly not very excited at all.

So here is my honest story, the not so fun part about traveling.

When I arrived in Istanbul I was stoked beyond stoked.  Everyone was new, the surroundings, the people, the language, the food and I was completely out of my element.  I was in the honeymoon period.  Istanbul could do no wrong.  The fun part was trying to find jobs and housing because it really gave us a chance to go out and wander around and get to know the city.  About 3 weeks in, we had housing and we had jobs.  I went off and started my new job at a travel agency in Sultanahmet.  I thought this job would be really exciting, getting a chance to learn about Turkey and meet other travelers as they came though.  But like any job, it gets old, and this got old fast.  Suddenly I had the Monday to Friday 9 – 6 job.  Wait a minute….. didn’t I just leave that back in Calgary?  Except at my job back home I made 10 times as much money, I worked with some of my best friends and I had real honest responsibility and it was really fun.  Now, I make a very small amount of money (I think I’m doing alright according to Turkish standards though), I don’t work with my best friends and I spend a lot of time sitting and staring at the wall waiting for something to happen.

Then it started to happen, the homesickness.  I was thinking to myself, why did I give up everything to come and do the exact same thing I was doing at home but to a shittier capacity?  Not to mention that I don’t have my family, friends, dog, bed, pantry stocked full of all sorts of food and my Xbox.

So everything just started to pile up and everything about this started to suck.  The little things became huge things.  I got super irritable (sorry to my poor roomies for having to deal with me). I’ve been told that everyone hits a slump about 3-4 months in and if you can get past that you’ll be alright.  In the past, when I’ve traveled it was for a few months at a time, I had a return ticket and i knew when I was going to see my family/friends and I always had a pocketful of cash to go do whatever the fuck I wanted whenever the fuck I wanted.

I’ve lived a relatively stress free life and for the first time in years I’m stressed, I can honestly say that I don’t have the coping mechanisms wired within me to deal with it.  It usually takes a lot to get me to this point but here we are.  What a terrible feeling, I can’t believe that people live like this all the time.

This may just sound like ridiculous bitching because honestly, this is probably going be the greatest experience of my life.  How many people get a chance to do something like Jet Set Zero?  I think I’m starting to come out of my dark hole of existence now though, today is my last day of work.  I’m going to see a Besiktas football game on Saturday, I’ve planned a weeklong excursion to take me down to the southern coast of Turkey where I’ll live in a treehouse and hang out on the Mediterranean sea and I have a ticket to Ho Chi Minh City.

I guess this is what I came here for, the experience, the good and the bad.

I’m not ready to give up yet, things are starting to look up.

The Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia is amazing. Unlike the historical sites in Istanbul, you wander up to the massive cathedral–once the largest in the world–without seeing a hoard of tourists (we saw two), and walk inside without any ado. I would love to show you the interior, but the video didn’t come out. Needless to say, it looks unrestored and unadulterated.

Beautiful.

And the next Jet Set Zero destination is……..

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In addition to being brought on as a cast member for Jet Set Zero, the need for someone experienced in dietary and fitness advice was also identified.  That’s where I come in.  It’s difficult work living and working overseas and the result is that nutrition and health often take the back seat.  So I am currently developing a food plan and exercise regime that will take care of these hardworking cast members.

No more boruk for breakfast, baklava for lunch and sutlac for dinner.  Instead, meals will be more balanced and look something like this:

And we all know how good a cold Efes is at the end of a long day, but in the interests of health that will have to go as well.

And no nutrition plan is complete without an exercise plan.  I’ve already implemented a schedule of cardio and weight lifting to get the team in tip-top shape.  The great thing about Istanbul is that in the parks, next to the playgrounds, there is exercise equipment, so there is no need to pay for a costly gym membership.  On Sunday we began this program at Princes’ Island:

They truly seem to be enjoying it. Extra kudos to Brian for really giving it on those lat pulldowns.

Through a combination of these two areas of focus, it won’t take long before this team is running marathons through the streets of Istanbul.  I can’t wait to see that!

After week one in Istanbul (well sort of, half of the time was spent in Sofia, but that’s besides the point), I’ve had a whole lot of ups and downs.

Ups include amazing sunsets, coffee on our terrace, random excursions to the Princes’ Islands, kick ass food, and wonderfully helpful people.

I’m Kris!  Kris O!  The newest cast member on Jet Set Zero!

Travel bug, itchy feet – whatever you want to call it, I’ve got it.  I picked it up after going to Europe years ago when I realized how much more there was to see in the world outside North America. Subsequent trips to Asia and Africa opened my eyes to how affordable this travelling thing could be, and it very soon became a priority in my life.  A second job was procured to pad the travel fund, and the endless daydreaming and planning began.

When I first read about Jet Set Zero, I loved the idea.  The concept of working to live and living to travel totally appealled to me and working overseas to fund further travel was something I had not tried before.  When I first expressed interest in joining the group, I never in a million years dreamed that it would actually happen.  And I don’t doubt for a minute the steps I had to take to get here.  I was working in a cushy HR job for the BC Provincial Government and quit at a time of layoffs and economic uncertainty.  I gave up my awesome apartment and put my stuff into storage.  I said goodbye to my amazing friends and family without being able to tell them when I would return.  All with zero hesitation.  Why?  Because life is too short.  There are so many adventures to be had.  And what an adventure this will be!

Chained to a desk in Victoria, BC

I could eat hundreds of those rice-stuffed mussels (midye dolma).