Twenty years.

In 2006, I was awarded a Fulbright Teaching Assistant Scholarship. I was so proud to have been chosen.

A couple of weeks ago, my mother sent me a picture of this newspaper article, and that same feeling of pride tingled again. Then I noticed the date: May 2006. The article had been published almost twenty years ago to the day.

Twenty years.

I look at the picture in the article now and, at first, all I can think is how young I was. I was so excited about winning a Fulbright and could feel the world opening up in front of me. Little did I know that the scholarship would completely change the course of my life. So much for the cliché interview question, "Where do you see yourself in five years?"

The scholarship took me to Berlin, Germany, where I taught English at a high school for a year. It was only supposed to be a year away from home, but I never returned.

That was never the plan, but life has a funny habit of doing its own thing, regardless of our plans.

As “I” became "we", life often threw unexpected challenges our way. There were times when we did not know what would happen next or where life would take us. Now, twenty years on, I look at that young woman in the newspaper picture and know that she has done alright. She is now in the process of starting her own small English language school in the Swiss town that has adopted her and her family.

What a difference twenty years can make.

Twenty years. Twenty years of teaching English as a foreign language to thousands of students from countless countries. Four countries, three further qualifications, two languages – and one moment that changed my life forever.

It is amazing to think about everything that has happened in that time.

Twenty years.