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
To Have Trash
Cheyenne Tessier
2013-01-09
The smell of burning waste seeps in through the open screens of my bedroom window. I came here to escape it. I thought that it would be far enough. It was us who raked the plastic next to the highway and added a bit of grass, so that it could burn quickly. It was me who bought...
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City Boy
Matthew Travers
2013-01-09
After living in New York City for a year, commotion has grown to be the norm for me. I thrive in the chaos, the shoulder-to-shoulder metropolitan density. My hometown of San Jose is a modestly urban city as well, which has led me to naturally gravitate towards a lifestyle full of traffic and Starbucks coffee shops...
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A chance to grow, learn, experience…Appreciate
Tasha Torres
2013-01-09
I live just outside the city limits of Kedougou in a house with a blue front door that I’ve come to know so well. I live with my dad (Baba Ibrahima), two moms (Nene Dialamba & Nene Ruggie), six brothers (Alseyni, Moustapha, Papa, Oumar, Aliou & Amadouwouri), one sister (Aissatou), and my grandma. After much...
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Immersion Through the Lens of a Looney Toon
Becky McClements
2013-01-09
Written November 3, 2012: It’s a Saturday afternoon and I’m escaping the unfathomably hot sun with my host dad in the shade of the mango tree in our compound. One of our neighbors, an incredibly goofy woman with a great sense of humor and dance moves to boot comes strolling up to us, swinging a big yellow bucket, which...
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The Difference Between Man and Wolf
Alan De Leon
2013-01-09
During the weekdays, I make a regular 30 minute walk to my apprenticeship organization’s headquarters. Back in Houston a similar trek would have been largely annoying – my car courts my laziness. I get a kick out of HQ every time I see it. It is an odd structure by common architectural standards: the outer...
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Midpoint Reflection: What You Expected
Emily Hwang
2013-01-07
What you want is romance. unpretentious country folk with toothless grins and simple dreams of owning a washer and my 10,000 watt, bicultural, hot-off-the-college-prep-academy grill complexity quieting to a dull ommmmm Eat, Pray, Love style. What you expected were children and my 19 year old, non-Ecuadorian hands molding them like clay into my idea of model...
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A Vida Sem Aventura Não Vale Nada
Devani Santos
2013-01-05
QUE BELEZA Glimpses into my life as a Global Citizen Year Fellow 2012! Vale do Capao, Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brasil
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When We Are Here
Carly Sitrin
2013-01-05
“We breathe. We pulse. We regenerate. Our hearts beat. Our minds create. Our souls ingest. 37 seconds, well used, is a lifetime.” -Mr. Edward Magorium Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium I lost my watch the other day. It fell out of a motorcycle taxi and I felt it graze my ankle as it leapt toward the...
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A Driving Force
Peyton Foley
2013-01-04
Life can get tough but I try not to let it get me down. What I mean is that life can’t put you down as long as you choose how to view it. I must admit however that it is really hard to deal with life when I can’t talk to someone about it. Living in Ecuador...
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It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World
Ely Kadish
2013-01-04
…But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl. Before arriving in Ecuador I read and was told many stories about the culture I would be living in, and one concept that constantly recurred was the idea of Machismo. In short it is the practice of a largely male dominated society — unequal work...
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Un Dia Ecuatoriano
Lydia Collins
2013-01-04
The following link is to a video that I made documenting the incredible life I am living down here. It is important to watch and process images of life here without judgement, but instead with curiosity. Why does that work? Are those people happy like that? What makes that system function? How can we improve that situation...
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Happy new year
Nathan Edwards
2013-01-04
Happy new year!! I hope everyone is doing well and had a great holiday season! The holidays here were very nice and much different from that of the U.S. Christmas is not as big a deal here as I thought it might have been, since about 98% of the country is Catholic. On Christmas Eve,...
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