In April, the 40-year-old North Willow Glen resident lived those words by volunteering at an orphanage in Porur, India, for three weeks as part of a three-month sojourn to the country.

It was not the first time Rysavy had been globe-trotting to explore and volunteer. Ten years ago, she helped build a healthcare facility in Kenya.

"My goal is every five to 10 years I get to rejuvenate," she says.

India was next on the list of her top 10 places to visit in the world, and she said she is fascinated by the country's development.

"Since the time of Gandhi, a lot of the change he was advocating has come to fruition," says Rysavy.

These changes resonate with Rysavy, a manager at Hewlett Packard, who sees outsourcing jobs as opportunities for the rest of the world to catch up to America's wealth.

To bring it all closer to home, Rysavy chose a nongovernment, nonreligious volunteer program called Global Volunteers that partners with the Dazzling Stone Children's Home, an orphanage with 95 children in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Rysavy and three other U.S. volunteers taught three English and math classes in the morning and supervised afternoon activities in singing, dancing and art.

"I never had children, so I wanted to be exposed to their energy and see what they're learning," she says.

After three weeks of teaching and being a "mother," she says she has a new appreciation for teachers and stay-at-home parents.

She says she came to admire the "amount of heart that goes into life" for Indian teachers who taught at school and then went home to cook and clean for their families. These individuals have far fewer conveniences than U.S. residents, she says.

Although Rysavy and the three other volunteers—all female lawyers—stayed at a guesthouse in more luxury than the local people, she did visit local families to have tea or dinner.

"You see, hear, smell and taste everything," she says. "You smell all the flavors of cooking, sweat, trees, the heat, the cows. It's just intense."

During her trip she visited the Taj Mahal, went on a yoga retreat, marveled at the Jaipur palace and observed tigers on safaris at three national parks.

But what impressed her most were the children in the orphanage.

"Each child had their own story of how they came to be there," she says. "But they were so loving and smiling; some had siblings and some said that all 95 children were their brothers and sisters."

One highlight was tutoring two fourth-grade boys who had trouble keeping up in math class.

"It was adorable," she says. "The one who was more advanced kept trying to help the struggling one by doing it for him. I couldn't explain addition in Tamil, so he translated it and finally starting helping his friend versus doing it for him."

Another experience that stuck in her mind was the time that the volunteers took the children to an amusement park and bought them ice cream.

"They all thanked us," she says. "They were very polite about the ice cream, but they just wanted to hold your hand."

While Rysavy says friends and coworkers were impressed with what she did, she says she doesn't understand their awe.

"The interesting thing was people at home said, 'You're so courageous,'" she says. "But it's not courage. It's just a desire to go and be there."

And she adds, "I'm smart enough to know that I say I'm going to help the kids, but I get most of the benefits."