I believe in orchestrating life. I don’t wait for things to happen; I try to make them happen. Sometimes I’m all over the place, spreading seeds in many locations hoping they will germinate, and show me the “right” direction for me. Do you do that?

It doesn’t matter whether I’m in Africa, Belize or in the U.S., I  take charge, plan ahead, hoping that all will fall into place, and the strange thing about this is that I put in the same amount of passion,no matter where I live in the world.

For example, after I flew from Lesotho to Europe, and then the U.S. to visit family and friends last July, I knew that I wanted to end my Peace Corps service in Lesotho. So I started visualizing how things would proceed, and that gave me the strength to make it happen. I started with the fun part: tracking cheap flights on Google flights via different destinations, to return to Paris, Copenhagen and California, for the Christmas holidays. I then worked my way backwards to July 24th, when I returned to Lesotho, and faced a severe snow storm.

I didn’t want to feel like a failure for quitting early, so I started planning my secondary project so I could feel proud of leaving my mark at the village school. I worked on the grant proposal, and scheduled visits to Maseru, to meet with a Peace Corps staff member to expedite the process. Since I started early, my grant proposal was accepted in record time, and thanks to fundraising and all the donations you sent to my village,  we succeeded in raising $5,000 in one week, and completed construction seventeen days later. The timing was perfect; it was scheduled to end by November 30th, and due to the workers’ motivation to get paid right before the Christmas holidays, they were determined to finish on time.