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It was 6 am and I wanted to smoke a quick joint before going to sleep. I was tired as f*ck after working 17,5 hours that day but I would always choose to stay awake for 30 more minutes to enjoy this beautiful sunset and just spend some calm time with myself. This was my first work and travel program in the USA (for those who don’t know what this is - it’s a program in which students from countries with lower standard of life can go to the US for the summer with J1 visa and work there for 4 months and then travel for 1 month). I really wanted to go but I was also scared. I was going alone, not super confident with my level of english to work as a lifeguard at pool. It sounds like an easy job but: 1st - I am not the best swimmer; 2nd - In may, I broke my colarbone 3 weeks before my flight so I wasn’t able to swim during my first few weeks as a lifeguard. Thankfully we were 2 lifeguards at that pool and the weather was bad in the those first weeks so we had almost no visitors. I originally had a contract for Boston, Massachusetts but the weather was really bad and the pools there were still closed and the guys there were having just about 30 hours per week and I wanted to work... So I went for “2 weeks” to work in FC, Virginia where I was getting 73,5 hours per week at the pool. After the 2 weeks I have decided to stay in Virginia and for the whole summer I had about 2-3 days off. In july I got a second job in an arabic restaurant which was working until 5am as a server. We even started giving swimming lessons to the kids at the pool to make an extra buck. In total I was working about 100 hours per week and I was still happy and positive with a smile on my face all the time. More than that I could say that this was my best summer ever until that point. I met amazing people, I made friends for life and I changed my mindset forever. Since then I never stopped traveling and meeting new people. It is never about the place... It’s always about the people. Sometimes when you are afraid and it looks like things are going to be very hard and you are doubting yourself you just have to do it. You can be surprised of how much you are actually capable of. Go out there and do the things that scare you!