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
A History Written in the Sands
Elias Estabrook
2011-12-12
Silhouetted against a crackling fire, the children chant. To me, the words are a song of dynamic gibberish, though I know them to be beautiful verses of the Koran. The recited text is passed around the circle of restless brothers, sisters, and cousins, one child reading at a time while the rest provide a fervent...
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Bambi Grows Up
Lucy Blumberg
2011-12-12
I had forgotten how far I had progressed in Wolof. I was stressing over the little things, the fact that I could understand about 20% of the words in a sentence but couldn’t string them together to make any kind of sense. All conversations that I observed during work at the Poste de Sante or...
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We Heart Reproductive Rights!
Emily Hanna
2011-12-11
How does one talk about family planning and reproductive rights in a country where it’s taboo to acknowledge that a woman is pregnant? Loudly and enthusiastically, as it turns out, with lots of important people for an audience and plenty of media coverage to help spread the word. This uncharacteristic openness was but one of...
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BIG PROBLEMS
Tessalyn Morrison
2011-12-10
(The fact that this is from Halloween is a testament to my adaptation into Ecuadorian culture) Witches, tarantulas, haunted houses. Yes, all perfectly scary, but this Halloween nothing is scarier than “BIG PROBLEMS”. A month ago, another fellow and I had a conversation about how Global Citizen Year’s motto should be this phrase because each...
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Gracias
Heather Kurtz
2011-12-10
Happy Thanksgiving. I am so thankful to be here in Ecuador. I am thankful for the life lessons I am learning. One of which is to be grateful for all that you have. I spent the weekend in Quito celebrating Thanksgiving with all the Ecuador fellows. It was great. In this time I learned that I have many things...
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Poco a Poco
Priyanka Rao
2011-12-10
Today, I’m just quieter in general, so I’m getting less Spanish intake; yesterday’s exhaustion and headache justify my taking a break. Today I am sitting next to Alejo, with the privilege of listening to his iPod with him. With his twinkle-eyes and long eyelashes, he is trying to practice his English because he hopes to...
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Change Your Words
Holli Sullivan
2011-12-10
I watched a video once of a blind man sitting on a corner. He was holding a sign that said “I’m blind please help.” He gets the occasional dime n’ nickel, but the majority of the city folk ignore the man and go about their days. A young woman stops in front of the man,...
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39 Hours, Pt. 1
Welcome Frye
2011-12-09
My most recent project at my internship site, Runa Amazon Guayusa, is creating a GPS map of Bosque Colonso, a 22,000 acre rainforest preserve stretching from my village of Santa Rita, past the towns of Archidona and Tena, and through a number of other Kichwa villages. All conversations within the story took place in Spanish and/or...
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Caves
Priyanka Rao
2011-12-09
Today we are going to the Jumandy Caverns- the beloved tourist site of the inhabitants of the Napo province. I have expectations of a little cave, trash, people. We enter with lanterns on our foreheads and the clean but slippy weight of water-filled boots. We reach the rock (i) black and solid, as formed by...
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Boats, and Bulls, and Bravery! Oh, my!
Joan Hanawi
2011-12-09
Las Fiestas de Tena. The Parties of Tena. Dangerous words in any language. One thing that I’ve learned very quickly here is that Ecuadorians are very proud to be Ecuadorian. They love finding reasons to celebrate their vibrant nation, and one of the ways this is done is through the Fiestas. Each province or capital...
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Over the Edge
Abigail Hindson
2011-12-08
I don’t really know how it happened, but suddenly I was in the water. My day had been pretty ordinary before this surprising event: I woke up at dawn and did sun salutations as the insects and birds began their morning serenade. My sister and I ate a quick breakfast of cold empanadas de queso...
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A New Friend
Galen Burns-Fulkerson
2011-12-08
At 10:30 on Thursday morning, with my head hung in defeat and the fresh bag of bread still in my hands, I turned around to head home. After spending thirty minutes knocking on every door in the neighborhood and talking to as many neighbors as possible, I decided to save my mission for another day....
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