Over the last couple of years, I’ve been lucky enough to have some life changing experiences and it got me thinking about how valuable these many moments have been in my life. About how lucky I have been to travel around the world, meet people from different walks of life and have experiences that have helped shape me into the woman I am becoming today.

Through these moments in my life, I have learned a few valuable lessons, like how to order a cappuccino in Italy, without looking like a tourist or asking for another glass of vino, without having to use a translator. I learned that one of the greatest feelings in life, is the moment you master public transportation in a foreign country or when you’re finally able to understand a language, you never thought you could grasp. But most importantly, I learned that you can’t always listen to the negative ideas people create about places they’ve never been because when you arrive in a place like the Ivory Coast in Africa, you realize that, through your own experience, it wasn’t always right. You find yourself adapting to new places and it soon just becomes another day in the life of you. And when you look around, you know you’re experiencing the experience because even without realizing it, you’ve become it.

I’ve learned that it’s not always perfect though. That sometimes it’s actually just awful and the only thing you want is to be back home, laying in bed, while your mom tells you everything is going to be O.K. And it is, it is going to be O.K. because you learn that while it’s not always perfect, it is always worth it. It’s worth the bad moments in life, like when you’re without home in Italy because you found out that your host family weren’t exactly the best of people but because of them, you’ve been taking in by someone, who wants nothing more than to take care of you and wisp you away to drink vino in Venice for a week.

It’s an even trade, I believe. We go through the bad experiences in life because they lead us to the good ones and they teach us how to better appreciate them when they finally arrive. We become stronger people through these moments and if you’re anything like me, you’re literally stronger because dragging everything you own through the streets of Milan, Italy is not an easy task. I wouldn’t have changed a thing though because I learned to relax and chuckle a little at my misfortunes because I knew the good times would find me again.

The experience teaches that life isn’t always how you once imagined it, that the picture you painted in your mind of a particular place is more wrong than it will ever be right but that’s also the beauty of it all, too, because you learn to rewrite the script, to draw new pictures, with colors you never even knew existed. You create something bigger than what you once were because you’re not who you once were, but something greater, something more experienced with more knowledge than before.

I love the experience and while I haven’t done everything or been everywhere, I know that my life has been something worth being apart of. I am, more than lucky, to have lived in places, like New York City, Milan, Italy and now the Ivory Coast, Africa. I truly value these moments of living because without them, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I wouldn’t know the feeling of stepping onto new soil, or breathing in new air. I wouldn’t know the hard work that goes into washing your clothes on washboard or that teaching French kids the English alphabet would challenge me to be an more creative person, than I already am. And for these things alone, I owe it all to experiencing the experience.