Before I jetted off on a trip to Europe that wasn’t restricted by clock hands, I stayed with a college friend of mine in Queens, New York. She was so kind to let me crash on her couch for as long as I needed. We spent nights bouncing from Chinatown to Little Italy to Lower Manhattan and caught up on life after college, her big move the big apple, reminisced about journalism classes at our alma mater and laughed about student radio life where we met.

Being one with a kind heart and giving personality, she took me all around the city and was my personal tour guide. We shared laughs, silly faces in packed subways and I even got pooped on by a pigeon for the first time eating lunch outside her work at United Nations. Classic, I know.

She was very supportive of my decision to backpack across Europe alone. Her eyes lit up through her cute thick rimmed leopard print glasses when I told her I was going to Paris, France during my trip. She shared with me how she dreamed of eating gelato under the Eiffel Tower in the summer sun. I encouraged her to make a plan and make it happen.

There’s a lot of fear to let go of comfort and to take a trip to an unknown place. Saving money can seem helpless, especially when you’re living in an expensive city like New York, but I could see it in her eyes that she wanted it, and I knew she was going to make it happen.

Flash forward a couple of months later, and I’m on a train to Paris. I thought about Carmen and how she dreamed of being this close to the city of lights, so I drew a picture of her at the Eiffel Tower. The next day, I trekked through streets, getting lost in the global fashion hub, and found myself at a small bistro. I turned the corner, looked up, and could see the tower blossoming through the trees. It hit me more than I expected. I drove across 25 states with close friends, made a pit stop in New York and Boston, trekked across Germany and Amsterdam by this point but for some reason seeing the Eiffel Tower made me realize, “Holy shit. I made it. I’m traveling the world.”

Filled with so much excitement, I snapped the picture I drew of Carmen in front of the Eiffel Tower and mailed it to her. I wrote to her, “You will be here one day.”

Well, that day was November 22nd, 2016. She took a photo of the picture I drew for her in front of the Eiffel Tower and captioned it.

Seeing this on my page and knowing I helped encourage to make her dream a reality brought warmth to my heart and tears to my eyes. My friend was living her dream, something she worked so hard for, and there she was, Carmen in Paris!