“After Peace Boat, I felt drawn back to Australia—the first foreign country that I’d lived and worked in after college—to pursue a master’s degree in International Communication. Once again, I learned not to underestimate the power of connections and what I like to call the ‘small world effect’—the amazing way life seems to have for bringing people together again in the most unexpected ways and places—even when doing so seems to defy the odds…

In 1992, while in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China during my Semester at Sea study abroad program, a doctor from Madrid, Iowa came up to me after seeing my Iowa State sweatshirt. I was so excited to meet a fellow Iowan on the other side of the world! After the doctor got home, he and his wife sent my parents a lovely letter saying how they’d met me China. A few years later, I’d moved to Sydney, Australia and was watching a performance in the Sydney Opera House on Christmas Eve. I was feeling a bit homesick being so far from home during the holidays. But when I turned around...