My Travels

Quick stats

Here are my travel stats since 2018, brought to you by Kayak.

430,584 miles flown	709 days discovering	38 countries
17.3 times around the Earth	1.8 trips to the moon	1,038 hours in flight

Why is traveling important?

We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.

As the quote says, traveling changes our minds and that changes everything. I first traveled internationally at the age of 17 when I studied abroad in Madrid, Spain in the fall of my junior year in college. I left as a timid, skittish, overly sheltered girl who didn’t know much about the world around her but saw that most of the white students at my university were studying abroad so I thought that I should too.

Flash forward to October 10, 2016 — I changed. I remember this day vividly because I looked at the world differently, I walked with my shoulders back and my head held high as I walked through the streets of Madrid confident that I could belong anywhere because I belonged to myself. I felt invincible as I navigated the city speaking Spanish, riding the Cercanías, and enjoying tapas at cien montaditos. I found out that I was brave, bold, daring, opinionated, and most of all adventurous once I got out of the bubble of familiarity.

Flash forward to after graduation, I purchased a one-way ticket to Beijing, China and traveled all over Southeast Asia for 7 months straight by myself. I would have never ever thought that I would be brave enough to take myself out of my own comfort zone and travel solo experiencing all that I experienced. Before that trip I would not have called myself independent, courageous, or bold. But that trip made me realize that I was already all of those things before, I just never tapped into them.

So why is traveling important? It makes you realize who you’ve been all along. You become that much more confident, comfortable with the unknown, and you realize you can do anything.

A few of my favorite things

Favorite country: Turkey 🇹🇷, I loved how culturally diverse this country is.

Favorite thing about traveling: Being able to connect with different types of people all over the world. When I visit Asian countries I’m always mistaken for a superstar because they don’t see a lot of Black people so they always want to take photos with you.

Best decision I’ve made: Moving to Tulum for 3 months in 2020 during the pandemic.

Favorite dish: Thieboudienne, or chebu jen in Wolof, is the national dish of Senegal. It’s by far my favorite dish I’ve had traveling because it’s so light and FULL of flavor. It’s a whole fish served with Senegalese jollof rice and tomato sauce. I’m still dreaming about this fish.