In 1997, I had the opportunity to take part in a month long service trip to Calcutta, India to serve the “poorest of the poor” with a group from the Catholic Student Center at my university. We volunteered with the Missionaries of Charity, the order that Mother Theresa’s had founded. Serving in places such as the House of the Sick and the House of the Dying was such a challenging and such an absolutely amazing experience in so many ways. In many ways, it changed the course of my life.

Upon returning to St. Louis where I was working, I was beset by a restlessness which was like nothing I had ever felt before and which could not be extinguished. Then, at Mass one night, I saw a friend of mine who and just returned from serving with the Peace Corps in Ghana and suddenly everything made sense. I would volunteer abroad again, but this time for longer. I looked at several volunteer organizations during the following months and even reconsidered at one point during the process. But, in the end serving abroad was not a decision that I had a choice in.

In 2000, I sold my car, quit my job and began a year of service as a volunteer teacher in a middle school in Yantai, China through the WorldTeach program. My students were ages twelve to fifteen and I taught classes of up to one hundred students. What an amazing experience. I was overwhelmed by the friendliness, patience and generosity of the people who I met and who I worked with. During my holidays, I traveled through a lot of China, the longest trip being of two months in length during the summer holiday. I saw a lot of amazing things, but it is the people that I met along the way that I remember with the greatest fondness.

In 2001, I moved to Copenhagen, Denmark where I studied at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) through a fellowship from the Danish government and Grundfos. DTU is an excellent, international university and I had the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. I think that the best part about living in Denmark was that even during the most difficult times of my studies when I would be in the lab making measurements all night or I had problems with my theoretical models, I would remember that I was in such an amazing place as Copenhagen and that I had the chance to travel and to see so much, and I would smile. During my holidays, I traveled throughout Europe, to Asia and to New Zealand. I have met some remarkable people during my studies and my travels and I still keep in touch with people the world over.