Welcome to the Lookout Point
Savor the view you're not used to. Introducing a publication hosting travel stories, resources, lessons, and opportunities.
I’ve visited 14 countries (and counting) at 23 years old, and still have so much to learn about traveling and its nuances. What I know for sure is that travel is transformational.
Travel is one morning waking up to a woman you’d just met a day prior, speaking to you in Spanish and cooking you a breakfast accommodating your dietary needs, someone you’re going to be living with for three months while studying abroad in Mérida, Mexico. You eventually call her “mamá.” Travel is a thriving artist you met a month earlier in Mexico showing you around Lima, Peru, and its vibrant underground art scene. Travel is waking up in a volunteer house in Iceland and your chore for the day is to cook lunch for a group of thirty people with a few others, and you enjoy it. Travel is going on a walk by the port in Hurghada, Egypt, with your sister and the sailor of the boat tour you took earlier in the day. Travel is, in short, awesome, and once you get into the swing of things, addicting.
The idea of having a blog dedicated to my times abroad has been budding for quite some time, but there’s been a humidity in the air suffocating the over-watered seed of my ideas from completely flourishing. That sticky air is a metaphor for the procrastinating over-thinking perfectionist proud part of the self.
Since I graduated college, my writing has been nothing but a bunch of sentence-fragment journal entries and selling myself on WhatsApp in Spanish to realtors and landlords. There’s something that’s taken some time getting through to me: I’m not using this platform to prove something about my writing skills. I’m writing to share my stories and reflections because it feels selfish not to. I’m writing as a support system and resource for readers who are beginner travelers, don’t know where to start, are on a budget, want to do something really specific, learn something new, or whatever else it may be. The time is now to take a hike, breathe in the fresh cool air, get high on the process, and appreciate the view from all angles.
Before moving overseas, I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to dedicate my college education to. But by my third major-change, practicality was what I was going for, considering my stubborn values and ever-changing interests. Studying international relations was making me cynical and hopeless (and I can’t say the current state of the world isn’t doing the same), so I graduated with a degree in communication studies and Spanish. In those programs I both genuinely loved my classes and saw a wider range of post-grad opportunities.
Nonetheless, escaping the current state of the world wasn’t and isn’t on the table; while I genuinely enjoyed learning about international issues, the abstract academic aspect of it was ruining that fun for me. Now, I educate myself on my own terms, through journalists and media I trust, books and articles that catch my eye, conversations with people that cross my path, and especially by roaming about abroad.
Currently, I’m living in Málaga, Spain, working as an English language assistant in a high school. It’s my second year living in Spain, and my second year out of college. Moving to Spain has been a plan of mine since high school, and here I am. I’m proud of my persistence in moments where I was the only one who believed in my travel goals. It wasn’t until I fully funded my first trip to Iceland with my serving job that people began to turn heads and be like… oh, she’s not kidding.
That being said, I am hyper-aware of the privileges that have helped make my travels a reality. Although privileges give leverage, we all have different circumstances and goals — in the end, the drive to make things happen plays a big role, too. Not only that, but having support makes a huge difference. And if there’s anybody who’s supporting your decisions to make a change, move to another country, take a break from work, or just take a damn trip somewhere and relish in the newness, IT’S ME. I’M YOUR SUPPORT. ALWAYS AND FOREVER. Life is short, and the value of travel will make your life rich, IN EXPERIENCES (which is so much cooler anyways!!!!). I can’t even begin to express the gratitude I have each day for the lessons I’ve learned and connections I’ve made thanks to wanderlust.
If there’s any way to summarize everything I’ve learned from my adventures abroad, it’d be that there is never only one valid way of doing things or thinking about things. It’s easy to feel trapped in the mindset of “this is what I’m supposed to be doing,” engrained in us from society’s sway on us. But that’s influence; influence doesn’t represent our true selves or our gut feeling, but who the influencer (friends, family, boss, religion, dominant cultural narratives, your major in college, your can’t-believe-I’m-saying-it political affiliation, etc.) wants us to be. Being influenced is inevitable from time to time. Motivation fluctuates. But sometimes, we become the person that’s convenient for the comfort of those around us. But what would we be doing if that external influence SHUT UP for 24 hours? And if it SHUT UP for a year?
In addition to wanting to share the awesome things I’m doing, how I’m doing them, and why, I want this page to inspire and make it easier for you to step outside your comfort zone, meet new people, and see how things work in other parts of the world (and even other parts of your own country!!!). The mere potential of motivating one person to take the next step toward the goal that makes their stomachs churn in excitement is why I write. I genuinely believe the world would be a better place if more people traveled and engaged with the communities being visited.
Learning about the plethora of opportunities that exist and kinds of adventures people long for excites the hell out of me! Comment your thoughts, or share one or more ways in which travel has changed your life. I’d love it🥹
Until next time 🪂
- Tea <3