2013-04-23
“Was that me eight months ago?” I asked myself as I stared at my Global Citizen Year blog picture. I looked so young and naïve, not knowing what my year would really be about. The picture felt more like it was taken eight years ago rather than eight months before at fall training. My facial...
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2013-02-05
As a younger girl she watched telenovelas because that was what her mother and her older sister always watched. When she saw half-naked models in the newspapers, billboards, and on her father’s motorcycle she would stop to stare and idolize for that was what everyone did. When she was thirteen years old puberty had come. She was no longer considered a girl,...
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2013-01-28
One of the topics I had been curious about learning in taking a gap year was poverty. I could not come to understand how poverty existed in the 21st century. After spending two months in Puerto Quito, Ecuador and becoming familiarized with Voices of the Poor I have discovered a new definition for Poverty and...
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2012-11-26
Someone once told me that they heard: “The best method to prevent childhood/unwanted pregnancy and the spread of sexual diseases is to practice abstinence, but since people are going to have sex anyways you need to teach them sex education.” When I learned that the main reason for the high number of childhood pregnancy in Ecuador was due to the...
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2012-11-21
It was a semi-normal night for me in Ecuador when a conversation I had not anticipated started to unravel with my host-mom. It was a holiday week and my host-siblings were at their grandmas for the week so the house was unusually silent. My host-dad had decided to hang out with his friends than to join my host-mom and...
Read More2012-11-14
“Why am I doing this again?” I thought after my honeymoon phase in my host community had ended. I was scared, feeling lonely, and was experiencing culture shock. My smooth sailing had come to an end and reality started to hit. The fact that I would be spending six months in my community and the expectation of “change...
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2012-07-10
“Why would you want to waste a year of your life?” is a response I often get when I present the fact that I will be taking a gap year. For a while I did not understand why people were not open to the idea that a teenager would actually be eager to take a...
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