Learning Friendship During Travel

This story was submitted anonymously to the Stories of Travel collection as part of the May SEEQ sessions.

My trip to Turkey is really significant to me. I went to a graduation trip with a group of my eight friends for twenty days. I had two-year friendships with them at the time. I have a friend from Turkey and he recommended me to go to Turkey at some time. So, I talked to my friends and ask them whether they would like to go to Turkey. We came up with a few different places but ended up going to Turkey. We made a concrete plan prior to the trip. We wanted to fly in the hot balloon and do sky diving. We did plenty of research about the authentic Turkish restaurants and attractions, and we made a time line for each day. We had agreed on everything on that plan before we went. However, during the trip, we have several small fights or conflicts. Some of my friends want to go somewhere else, while me and the other friends want to stick with the plan. We exchanged some Lira before, but each person exchanged different amounts. So, we decided to share them together. However, that caused a big problem about our spending. One of my friends thought I spent less for the group than for myself. We never had big fights before, and I learned so much more about themselves and their personality than we were at high school. Traveling with so many people is challenging, but we finally made it through by speaking these problems out. Friendship is often hard to maintain, and traveling provides lens for me to get to know more about my friends.