Fellow Stories
True gap year stories from Fellows abroad!
Check out the latest blogs from Global Citizen Year Fellows in Brazil, Ecuador, and India!
Category
Class Year
Country
One Year On
Ananda Day
2011-07-11
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending a Global Citizen Year event. With new and old faces, prospective and returning fellows, and many of the people that make Global Citizen Year tick, I felt the close of another circle. This loop, the mark of being one year back from Senegal and...
Read MoreA Global Perspective
Mathew Davis
2011-02-01
Thinking about issues and problems on such a sweeping scale, with so many layers and complexities, planning for my own future now seems easier than ever before.
Read MoreGood Grief
Ananda Day
2010-08-23
The idiom “good grief” has always seemed a bit oxymoronic to me. How can it be that grief is good in anyways? Perhaps this is why “good grief” is often used as an exclamation expressing something bad that has come along- like rain on a birthday cake outside with candles lit. Good grief, it’s raining!...
Read MoreMy Year not in College
Hilary Brown
2010-08-07
September 2009, 32,000 ft in the air I was 6,137 miles from home headed for the western tip of Africa. I could have stuck with my peers, as many advised sitting in a college classroom on U.S. soil. But now, eight months later, no one questions what they then might have thought of as my...
Read MoreMy post for the ONE Campaign
Mathew Davis
2010-08-03
“Global Citizen Year fellow learns that poor farmers need support” – originally posted on the ONE Campaigns blog here: LINK Every year, Global Citizen Year chooses a group of young Americans to spend nine months working as apprentices in rural communities all over the world. Mat Davis, a 2009-2010 fellow, talks about his experience working...
Read MoreFull Circle!
Laura Keaton
2010-07-11
The first blog post that I wrote for Global Citizen Year was one that I thought about for a long time before writing. It was maybe the hardest post that I ever had to write because I wasn’t yet even out of the gate, and it was difficult for me to figure out how to relate Global...
Read MorePerchance to Dream
Ananda Day
2010-04-27
The phrase that keeps going through my head? It feels like a dream. When I actually say it out loud, I am referencing how surreal it is to be leaving my host family and Senegal – a fact that I have known, but something that was never quite manifest throughout this journey. When I think...
Read MoreOld School Google (Pronounced “Goo-Glay”)
Laura Keaton
2010-04-26
On Wednesday afternoon my sister left North Carolina headed for Germany, and on Thursday I read about the cloud of volcanic ash that a certain volcano in the land of Ice is spewing out, wreaking havoc on air travel in Europe. As it turns out, my sister is now stranded in London, but is taking...
Read MoreMalaria – “the biggest problem in Senegal”
Alec Yeh
2010-04-24
Every once and a while, I’ll sit next to Seck to observe a consultation. But for the first time, I sat in the patients’ seat, facing the ominous head nurse. Fortunately for me, I was only sitting there for an interview, and not for health reasons. “My last question. What is the biggest problem in...
Read MoreOn things I will miss and things I won’t
Ian Zimmermann
2010-04-24
As my time in Nebaj quickly comes to an end – just 4 short days until I leave – I’m left forced to think about the upcoming transition back into my old life. Call it reverse culture-shock or what you will, many basic things will be substantially different that what I’ve grown accustomed to. So...
Read MoreLooking Forward
Laura Keaton
2010-04-23
Josefina and Omar never cease to amaze me. Tonight at dinner while eating carrot cake that I made with Fina, she told Omar: “Hey listen, I said to Laura the other day, I said: Don’t be jealous of the students that are coming for the summer program, even though they’re going to be staying in...
Read MoreThe View
Laura Keaton
2010-04-15
The fellows now have just 2 short weeks left in-country. It seems unreal, because before I began my Global Citizen Year, my longest-ever vacation hadn’t even been that long. (It clocked in at 12 days.) Strange to think of my “closing time” as longer than any previous beginning, middle, AND end of a trip combined....
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