Ben is gone….

He was supposed to leave last Friday but due to a fuck up with his flight booking he ended up staying an extra 5 days. I have a heavy feeling in my heart. I knew all along that he would be leaving so it’s not like it was a surprise I didn’t see coming, but it doesn’t make the situation any easier. The last 4 weeks have been amazing, I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

The four of us are on this amazing adventure around the world but at the same time it’s super shitty. We’ve met some amazing people and as soon as we become close it’s time to say goodbye again. Even if Ben didn’t leave today, I would be leaving eventually anyways. I’ve said bye to my friends at home but I know I’ll be going back there one day and they’ll still be there. When you meet people traveling it’s difficult to say if you’ll ever see each other again. The goodbye is always sad because you always say yeah we’ll meet up in some part of the world, you can come visit me in (insert country here) or I can come visit you in (insert country here), and I think deep down inside we know it’s a lie.

I hope I’m wrong this time. I hope this isn’t the end.

To my dear Ben, thank you for being so wonderful to me, for taking care of me, for listening to my stupid stories, for appreciating Universal Solider as much as I do, for teaching me about Farmville, for the good times, for the laughs and for the love.

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.