First think of every person that you?ve met in the last month. Multiply that number by fifty. Next, think of every time you have laughed helplessly and times that by twenty. Think of every time you have cried (or wanted to cry) and times that by ten. And think of every time you have not known whether to laugh or cry or do a back flip because something you have just seen was so gorgeous or unbelievable or new. Imagine that happening daily. This is what it was like for me to adventure abroad.

I am a Canadian student, in South Africa with SASTS Working Adventures working with them on the TRAVEL TIMES, which is gearing up as a venue for students to talk and read about travel opportunities and experiences.

I have been staying at Ashanti Lodge ? a hostel full of peaceful appreciators of culture, danger-crazed adventurers and half-naked backpackers preparing for the pub. It is a crazy mix, but everyone will tell you the same thing: that travel is gorgeous, life changing, and even essential.

The first time I travelled I was 16 years old with a head too full of dreams to understand much of reality. I arrived at the Quito airport ? a treacherous runway squished into a crater several thousand feet up. A troop of eight Canadian exchange students, we were jostled through the neon lit streets of Ecuador?s capital to an orientation camp way up in the mountains. It was one in the morning and the previous arrivals had taken the blankets off of our beds.

That night I lay awake struggling for air; the thump of disco-beat across the valley. It was fabulous. I had never felt so free and excited in my life.

My year in Ecuador was a whirlwind of acquaintances and adventures, discovery and mishaps. I spent four months living with an Ecuadorian family and attending high school (itchy pleated skirt, green knee socks, and all). I learned to speak Spanish and dance Salsa; got used to weekends with five hundred distant relatives; and discovered a people who, although less open-minded than the commonly outrageous Canadian, were more loving and kind than anyone I had met back home.

I studied photography and played witness to the crushing economic crises that surged through the country. I met my best friend. On the Galapagos Islands, I experienced for the first time a pristine white sand beach completely void of people. For two weeks, I taught English at a destitute mission school in the Amazon jungle (five days walk to the nearest road) and then said so long to the country and people who had formed my most powerful memories.

Every person in every stage of their life is very slowly figuring things out. Travel and work in a foreign country puts that process on fast-forward. When I returned from Ecuador my life was changed. Suddenly so much was beautiful, and so much had to be done.

While travelling I had made lifelong friendships with people I would never have talked to were we in Canada. The world had opened up for me, and I expanded my social circle to embrace a diverse and interesting group of people. I had experienced many difficult things while abroad, had witnessed the effects of abuse on a family, a relationship, a young spirit. When I returned to Canada I began volunteering at a shelter for abused women and their children. The contacts that I made in Ecuador have provided me with many opportunities. I returned there as a sales rep for printcity.com, helping an Ecuadorian printing company to seek international business. I am in South Africa now inspired in part by a South African exchange student that I met while travelling.

Taking on a foreign adventure forces you to leave your comfort zone and to be bombarded by a waterfall of new experiences. You return home with an international perspective. You are able to look in on your life with wisdom gained abroad, confident with a network of foreign contacts that will stick with you for life. Travel is glorious, and it is also powerfully irrevocable. It is a student?s true introduction to the world.