The summer before my senior year of high school I was given the opportunity to do something extraordinary. For two weeks, in the beginning of August, I worked as a volunteer for Projects Abroad, building parts of a community center in Cape Town, South Africa. After two plane rides and 18 hours, I arrived in a foreign place, alone, with a suitcase and the desire to somehow make a difference.

I wasn’t alone very long. For the first week I was there, I shared a house with fourteen other volunteers. The second week there were only the five of us building project volunteers left and, trust me, one place has never felt so empty when the first group left. My housemates were from Italy and Scotland and New York and California and France. We brought almost every corner of the globe under one roof.

But the house I lived in wouldn’t have been a home without Faye. She owned the house, but was so much more than just a landlord who lent us rooms. She made breakfast and dinner for fifteen volunteers and her family while still running her own business. She taught us about Cape Town and the people, and even scolded us when we didn’t seem to be experiencing it fully. Faye was my mother abroad, and I’ve never grow to love someone so much in two weeks.

I remember the first night the rest of the building group and I arrived. The other volunteers had already been there a week. They knew Faye and their own project coordinator, who you’ll meet later in this story, and they had decided to prank us new kids. All throughout dinner, they emphasized how strict the coordinator was--that he was in the military, had no patience for laughing, that, under no circumstances, should we talk or smile while he was talking and that we had to stand at attention when he arrived. And we believed them. So when their coordinator walked in with his brother, who would be our coordinator, we stood. For almost forty seconds, the dinner table was silent. Faye began to laugh at the end of the table, then the other volunteers, and then Nash, the strict “military” coordinator. Then we knew. We’d been pranked, but now we were initiated-- we belonged here.

I can’t thank whatever gods you do or don’t believe in enough for gifting me with the friendships I forged in my two weeks in Africa. I worked with a Scottish girl my age who was no taller than a hobbit and somehow had more love and energy than anyone else and an Italian guy who, hopefully jokingly, constantly told me to “go back to Pennsylvania” and threatened me with a floor fan when I didn’t stop talking. Another Italian offered to teach me some of his language, only to laugh after he taught me how to say the most explicit of phrases, and found joy in knocking over my playing card towers. There’s Deen, who was in charge of the building project, practically my father abroad, and gave the greatest hugs; he also invited us over to his home just so we could play with his litter of puppies. (Thank you for providing me with dogs while I was abroad, by the way). Vash, our project coordinator, took us go-carting and paint-balling, made fun of the way I mixed cement and filled sand bags and pretty much everything else, and lent me the softest scarf in the world. There were at least fifteen other volunteers who still mean the world to me, but if I talked about everything they did for me, you'd be reading for days.

If nothing else about volunteering abroad worked like it did, I still would’ve loved it, because the experience is unbeatable. I worked in Lavender Hill, nicknamed “Gangland” and “the most dangerous place on the Cape Flats.” It has a population of 12,000, although it is often assumed it is much larger, and it definitely seemed like it was. That is where my building project was, and my heart still remains. Working in that township and playing with the children who were at the community center put everything into a different perspective. I met people who were happier with basically nothing than the people I know that have everything. The kids made me smile like I never had before, even when five or six of them latched onto me at once, leaving me covered in crayon marks, snot, and truly genuine love. There’s so many things I’ll never forget about my time there. Cramming sixteen people into vans meant only for seven. Playing soccer in the sand with the older children in the township when they returned from school; in case anyone cares, I stopped two shots, and had the bruises to prove it. Working through the rain to build a wall that couldn’t have been more than two feet tall. Huddling around a children’s plastic dining set, eating grocery store chicken and fries, while Deen made us cry with his goodbye speech. Walking with, petting, and being licked by lions. Playing a game of chess in the dark, the board illuminated by only a flashlight, because the power had gone out.

There’s some things that money can’t buy. The experiences from above are those things.

So, you’re probably wondering why this even matters, why my personal story has any effect on you; I’d be asking the same thing. I rightly don’t know. But I can share some advice-either my own or some I picked up along the way.

Never be afraid of adventure. Don’t just learn about other cultures, experience them. It’s more fun to get lost. Do what you love and love what you do. Surround yourself with people who are only going to lift you higher. You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy a plane ticket, and that’s practically the same thing. And, my personal favorite: