Hi steemit! My name is Ashlyn and I am just a weird chick from Belize. I bought a one-way ticket to Bangkok in 2012 and I have been travelling the world since then. So many rad people that I've met recently have told me about this website and the community so I decided to start posting some of my travel experiences on here, from the past, the present, the future, and all of the strange thoughts in-between. My decision to travel alone for 6 years has brought me to places I couldn't have even dreamed of. Hoping to inspire and entertain and share the love. Anyways, here is what I am up to right now, enjoy <3

One of my biggest regrets (so far) in life was not continuing dance from my teen years and into my 20's. For some reason I always thought that I was too old to relearn everything, but after stumbling across a salsa school in Colombia last year and rediscovering my passion for dance, I decided to sign up for a dance studio in Lisbon. I'm learning hip hop, street jazz and house, and I'm rapidly advancing in salsa. When I first started I was so terrified that I would often freeze during my lessons, as if the winter chill had entered my nervous system, and in one of my classes I pretended that I had an important phone call on my Canadian number that I keep on airplane mode and left in the middle of the class to avoid embarrassment. That night I just really did not want to continue, but woke up the next day with a strong coffee and relentless self trust, reconsidered getting "dancing is for losers" tattooed on my forehead, and continued. I still trip over my feet, but my improvement is undeniable and I'm finally, once again, nourishing a hobby that gives me ultimate joy. I told my friends in Canada last year that I would be moving to a random city in Europe with zero plans, and when the summer gave into autumn, I packed my bag and flew to Europe with zero plans. Lisbon had some sort of magnetic pull, with a tangible vibrancy and charm -the colourful buildings, bold against the stark blue sky, toppling over each other as if they are held together by the thin electric wires connecting them, the strumming of a guitar fading in and out of the narrow cobble stone roads, the sun softly sinking into the slow moving river. It's a laid back, wake up at noon and do nothing for the first few hours and maybe go to work type of vibe here. It's funny because Lisbon has such a profound history of innovation and power but people here generally have issues getting to work on time. I feel like I fit in, though. The other day I was sitting in the city square drinking an espresso and reading a book by Pessoa, one of Portugal's most influential poets, and there was a passage that caused me to burst into tears, that feeling you get from a beautiful piece of literature. I felt everything all at once, a sudden wave rolling through my chest and breaking around my lungs. I felt the loneliness of traveling alone, a cold draft moving over the endless black water and into my rib cage, and I felt the joy of it all, the sun splashing over my skin. I thought about the person I was 6 years ago - the self loathing and the insecurity, the toxicity in my decisions. I thought about the person that I am now - independent, full of love, imperfect still. There I was, sitting in a park in a city that I never dreamed I would ever be sitting in, my mind wandering far into the dark spaces between the stars and then back to the cigarette butts between the cracks in the sidewalk. My eyes drifted across the pavement and focused on a tree leaning over a bench. I thought about the amount of years it took to grow, with patience and grace, the roots curling in and out of the ground, the branches twisting upwards and downwards, and downwards and upwards still. I'm on the pursuit of happiness, just like everyone else in this world. Now if I realize that something makes me happy, I do it. I am not fearless, I just don't let fear overpower my decisions. So there I was, sitting in a park in a city that I never dreamed I would ever be sitting in, tears streaming into a poem.

The lady yelling at the guy on the floor beneath her to bring up the pillow case she dropped, the soft sound of a piano playing somewhere in the apartment, me being one foot in the grave because of 1 euro bottles of wine, the smell of blue paint on a Saturday afternoon, brilliant sunshine on my neck.

After treading in deep water for awhile in Lisbon, jumping from metro to metro, accidentally knocking over the pizza sign in the metro station and trying to apologize in broken Portuguese, really unsure about how exactly I was going to make this work but trusting myself anyway, I’ve landed a job teaching english at the institute I really wanted to work at, an apartment that I can put all the plants in, in a city that inspires me endlessly. I’m working part time so that I can continue writing poetry with the hopes of publishing a book later (people will be lining up to buy it (I have enough immediate and extended family members to form a semi-noticeable line)). Still trying to figure out whether or not I have a natural talent for house and hip hop dancing or if I should just stick to my i-don’t-really-know-what-i’m-doing-should-i-switch-from-wine-to-gin routine at parties. I have enough free time to travel and write and dance, and enough time to practice cooking vegan food that is so dank you won’t even know that it’s vegan. Anyways, so it goes, this life thing - just want yourself first.

We are divine.