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Where do you start when you have seen and experienced so much? How do you begin after being away for two whole weeks? I have pages and pages of scribbled notes, some scrawled under the stars of an Italian night sky while waiting for Y to take yet another photo of the Colosseum, but for now, it is all I can do to go through my pictures, gather my thoughts and wonder how is it that Rome feels so far away when we were eating honey and fig and pomegranate gelato by the Fontana Di Trevi less than two days ago.

Everywhere we went, I watched elderly tourists take photographs, watched old beggar women hold up pictures of the Pope in pitiful hope that it would jerk just one more heartstring, and I could not help but think how utterly fortunate I am that I was travelling foreign lands, that I could take a 12-hour flight across oceans, at just 26, while others emptied bank accounts for a trip of a lifetime and yet others begged for a dollar that could see them through another day.

I watched as the crowds, myself included, averted our eyes as we scurried past so we would not have to see the homeless and feel guilty for not helping. If one out of every ten people gave just ten cents, the beggars would have been able to eat for a day. Y says I cannot help everybody, which is true; surely there must be hundreds more for every beggar we came across, millions more surviving in poverty around the world. But I believe in helping those that I can. I only wish I could have given every single one of them something.