OK, so you’re young and just wrapping up your college education and feeling the need to get out there and see some places that aren’t Rhode Island.

A road trip, that’s what’s called for. Just head out and leave your options open. Be ready for things that aren’t what you’re used to.

Zach Johnson, 24 and just a credit or two shy of his Rhode Island College degree, is hitting the road in September.

He’s going to Lang Fang, which is about an hour south of Beijing but a world away from the spectacle of the upcoming Olympics.

He’s not part of a tour group. He could get his hands dirty on this trip.

“My family thinks I won’t come back,” he says.

He graduated from Barrington High School and grew up appreciating the opportunity to lend a hand to those not sharing the good life he enjoys. His parents, Peter and Nancy, made sure of it, he says.

Sometimes, he ran very informal food drives. He told friends coming to visit to bring some canned goods along. When the stockpile was sufficient, he got the chow to the right places a few days before Christmas.

“I’m not sure if I’ve ever wanted a 9-to-5 job. I’ve always wanted to make a living by helping other people. In my short life, I’ve found that’s the ultimate happiness.”

The trip to Lang Fang is part of that. He will go to work for room and board at an amazing place called Bethel.

He will take his major in public relations at Rhode Island College with him. He’s not sure where it will fit in — maybe in administration or fundraising, which is a never-ending process in a place created to help the very young and very vulnerable. He has also been asked to teach English.

Bethel is a school for blind Chinese orphans. It was started four years ago by Delphine and Guillaume Gauvain, a French couple who are friends of the Johnson family.

Bethel is a place where need sometimes runs ahead of resources. It started in one room with 10 students and one teacher. It started with the children being given grains of rice to count to get their fingertips conditioned to discerning braille dots. The braille paper and printing equipment came later.

The school has grown. Visiting teachers, some from the United States, bring their special understanding of teaching the blind and pass it on to the staff.

“There are 34 kids there now,” says Johnson. “And they are building room for more.”

He hopes to do some work on the 17-acre farm that is the key to making Bethel self-sustaining and to helping move the children toward independent lives.

The farm also puts out one hell of a jar of jam made the French way.

Johnson will come home late this year. He might do a little more traveling before heading back to Rhode Island, maybe visit a friend who is in the Peace Corps in Cambodia.

This is his time to see things he didn’t see growing up in Barrington. It is his time to find some balance with people and places that are unlike anything he has known.

When he gets back, he will be different than when he went. He is sure of that.

“I’m just grateful they took me,” he says. “I’ll be coming back, finishing college, starting my life.

“This is going to make me humble. I have a great life here, but I will see people who live simply but content.”

For more information about Bethel, go to www.bethelchina.org.

bkerr@projo.com