Forget excuses. If you work in news, you can share what you know. Plain old passion for journalism can carry you from a city council meeting or a copy desk straight to where other journalists need you -- maybe even a ciudad three plane flights and a cab ride away.

A month ago I went from warm St. Petersburg winter to the chilly mountains of Chiapas, Mexico, to find out just how much journalists have in common.

There were plenty of reasons to not even try: tongue-tied classroom Spanish, limited teaching experience and fear that my decade in U.S. newsrooms just wouldn't translate in Mexico.

But if five women in Chiapas could risk themselves to answer the call of the Press Institute for Women in the Developing World, well, I could risk a week to see if I could help them.

Even if I was terrified.

I work on a copy desk. My most breathless moments come from selecting words to go in 70-point type. Most nagging questions can be quieted by Merriam-Webster Online.

And I was about to fly to a country where I almost spoke the language to talk to strangers about journalism -- when I didn't yet know the word for headline.

Talk about loco!

And yet: What could be more natural, really, then meeting a new group of people and talking about what you love? I'd tried it in English, volunteering to talk to high school and college students about copy editing.

Switching languages and cultures pumps up the pressure, but it radically kicks up the reward.

Here's why: Suddenly those reasons you became a journalist in the first place, the phrases that sound trite after too many repeatings, burst back into vibrant color.

Freedom of the press means more when someone tells you that local officials throw reporters in jail. Legally. (And not because they want to subpoena your notes. Just because they didn't like what you said.)

Speaking truth to power is more powerful where the chasm between classes means the politicians really may not know stories that indigenous women decide to tell. Meanwhile, the tools you take for granted take on new potency. Marissa's better lead means more readers for her expose on illicit abortion. Added balance in Tania's story about child workers means one more person takes it seriously. Juana's more vigorous digging for official sources on a wetlands project means a whole new story, about a neighborhood that doesn't know it's about to be uprooted.

You can talk about story structure, about interviewing, about the writing process. They can teach the folks in charge how to run a better country -- and give the people around town the information they need to fight for one.

Look, my hair was stringy for a week. I never got used to the toilets being inside the tiled showers. I sometimes forgot words as simple as puebla. Every few hours I got flummoxed completely and had to apologize while I gasped -- seconds upon seconds passing -- for language. I was sick for a week when I got back, good ol' traveler's diarrhea. I spent an hour looking up words like "copy desk," only to discover I had to explain what a copy desk was. One evening I assumed that because everyone was quiet around 7:00, it was time for bed – only to pull my clothes back on as everyone went back out for the traditional late dinner and coffee.

It felt sometimes like the hardest thing in the world, to be a journalist outside her own language – and outside the cubicle. But compared with what these women faced, it was the easiest way in the world to spend a week. All I had to do was trade my latte for a café con leche.

All I had to do was forget the excuses to put my tools into the hands of someone who could really use them.