Fellow Stories
True gap year stories from Fellows abroad!
Check out the latest blogs from Global Citizen Year Fellows in Brazil, Ecuador, and India!
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Class Year
Country
Cotundo – My Gateway to Change
Meliza Windmoeller
2012-11-14
This is the poem I wrote as my “self documentation” when we stayed in our communities for one week last month to “get our feet wet.” Anxiety and loneliness are prominent Will the confusion ever end? The experience of a new culture In the heart of the Amazon. I focus on the horizon As...
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Life is Good
Daniel Schwarz
2012-11-14
A smile swept across my face while riding in the back of on old pickup truck. To be specific, a rickety but sturdy and faded green Chevy with lots of miles on the odometer and lots of life left in it. The wind whipped at my face causing a rucous in my overgrown hair. I...
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The Small Things
Meliza Windmoeller
2012-11-14
Welcome to the Amazon. Where everything is a luscious green, drinking water is a luxury, the electricity is questionable, and spiders the size of your fist join you at bedtime. What…exactly have I gotten myself in to? I must have asked myself this question dozens of times since leaving the comforts of Quito. There I...
Read MoreRight Choice ≠ Easy Choice
Betty Gebre
2012-11-14
“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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Adjustments
Marisa Comeau-Kerege
2012-11-14
I originally began writing this post about expectations, because let’s be real, who packs up their life for a year and moves to Africa without some sort of expectation as to what they are getting themselves into? Fall Training made everything seem so fun and happy all the time. Having spent the 10 days at Stanford living in the...
Read MoreThe Bubble Is Back
Emily Collins
2012-11-14
You know that feeling of pure happiness? Where you feel a bubble inside you begin to light and spread throughout each cell within you? The light shines threw in the form or a smile and the sound of a laugh. That feeling of having pure satisfaction and being content within. Where in a single moment...
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The Floor
Allie Wallace
2012-11-14
Before I came to Senegal, I was fairly detached from the floor, or as detached as gravity allows. The floor was a convenient place to keep chairs and tables and trash cans and other such useful items. It was a chore, always needing to be vacuumed, swept or mopped. I never gave it much thought...
Read MoreThe First Day
Kevin Do
2012-11-13
I woke up to the sound of roosters cockle-doodle-dooing and saw myself surrounded by little white strings woven together to create my mosquito net, but past that I saw an unfamiliar ceiling. The ceiling to my new room. I woke up at eight and was greeted by many ” A Finii e jamm?” which in Pulaar literally means,...
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The Foundation of a Community
Carrie Hamilton
2012-11-13
Upon coming to my community in Ecuador, I was expecting to be introduced to a world where women tended to the home all day whilst men set off to do manual labor. What I was not prepared for, however, was the reality of Alto Tena, where women are responsible for nearly everything. They are the...
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We Killed the Pig
Ella Wegman-Lawless
2012-11-13
When I walked back into my yard after delivering lunch to the workers in the field, BAM. There was a dead and bloody pig lying in the dirt. Golly I sure do love Ecuadorian surprises. My mom had told me earlier in the week that we were going to kill a pig although I had forgotten. “Just a...
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“Permanent Placement”
Camille LeBlanc
2012-11-13
Although I loved my high school, I always felt trapped in the confines of the classroom. I was living in a rut of text books and class discussions and research papers, and all I could think about was my desperate need to break out of that comfort, to immerse myself in a completely unfamiliar environment, and to see...
Read MoreUma Vida Cheia de Belez
Dianne Perez
2012-11-13
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&feature=youtube_gdata&v=UFQG0fg6IX8
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