Settling Down... in spite of myself

Going global sounds good, but momentum comes and goes. Teaching means having a job and hardly ever eating exotic... or even nice cuisine. It means taking the bus at a regular time. It means not strolling jauntily around in a foreign land. But it still sounds nice, and it's better than being stuck in your home town. It's much better to leave your home town and later wish to return than to never have left at all.

As it stands, sometimes get homesick. I also sometimes want to shoot off to India. My mind changes every time I see a travel program... but mostly I just want to leave this place.

Preparing to go...

A couple of months before Go Time... it's difficult to know exactly how to prepare. No two people are the same, I'm sure... and it kills me that I'm not able to bring my bike, at least not at first. It looks like Turkey isn't the greatest place for cycling - maybe I'll find another sport.

As for what to bring, I've started buying little things... like a little computer.

I just don't want to get bogged down in decisions about what to bring and what to leave, so I'm prepared to make some deep, painful cuts - starting with my bicycle. When I moved from Japan back to the U.S., I brought a ton of useless junk that I never looked at again, and it cost hundreds of dollars. This time it's going to be bare essentials only.