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
The Impossible
Brittany Caceres
2014-12-09
Due to difficulty accessing internet in my placement some blog posts may take weeks to put up. 10.10.14 “Seamos realistas soñamos lo imposible” Let’s be realists… Let’s hope for the impossible. This is a quote by Che Guevara, an important hero and role model for the farmers in the community where I live, a settlement for workers...
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Au Sénégal, Sans Langue: Memoirs of a Bridge Year
Maylin Enamorado
2014-12-05
I. I’m seeing it this way now: Tough Times and Tough People are two drunk old men in a back alley somewhere in the Bronx. The two stand shoulder to shoulder, comparing height and build; they’re almost exactly the same in both. Annoyed, they pull two crates from behind a nearby recycling bin. Spectators begin...
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The Price We Pay To Feel
Hannah Phalen
2014-12-03
“And you find some way to survive… and you find out you don’t have to be happy at all to be happy you’re alive. Day after day, give me clouds and rain and gray. Give me pain if that’s what’s real- it’s the price we pay to feel.”* A focus of what we have learned...
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The Way Things Change
Alisa Nelson
2014-12-02
I was in Lome, Togo trying to catch a taxi. My family and I were there for the weekend during spring break and we had gotten lost looking for our hotel. My dad was attempting to use his non-existent Haitian Creole to talk to people, and I was nervously trying to make myself understood in...
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Joal
Elizabeth Schmidt
2014-12-02
I have now been in country for two months and I have made the switch to my final host stay. Although I am going to miss my family in Dakar, I definitely feel like I left off in the best possible way. My two older brother had become some of my best friends, my uncles...
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Baby Steps
Briana Merrigan
2014-11-24
“Dios le pague,” I say as I’m handed a steaming plate of rice and pig skin. This roughly translates to “God pays you,” and is a less cold-hearted version of “gracias.” Had I known this sooner, I would never have said “gracias” so often. Whoops. But I’m learning. I started here as an infant, barely...
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Saudade: Untranslatable Yet Universal
Nicholas Chieng
2014-11-24
Originally written on October 28th, 2014 Dear Mom, Dad, and Chris, I’ve never been to so many beaches before, and don’t worry; I remember to put on sunscreen every time I go. I’ve already been to more beaches in the span of two months than my entire eighteen years of life. I wish you could...
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We Live in the Flicker
Lindsay Saligman
2014-11-24
Today, my host mom woke up at five in the morning to get on the first bus into town in order to buy food. She wasn’t buying food for my family, but rather, for a group of twelve tourists that was coming for a tour. Santa Rita doesn’t get many tourists, but about a year...
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On Embracing Change
Nicholas Chieng
2014-11-24
For me, change is intrinsic to fear. It is human nature to fear what we can’t necessarily control. It’s how we’ve been raised. I think we can all agree that being comfortable is good, right? We like familiarity. We like routine. We like relatability. It’s new things like the future, an ominous gassy sphere of...
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Photo Blog 1
Yui Lee
2014-11-24
These are pictures of my first couple months in Ecuador featuring Fellows, families, and Ecuadorian nature. The banner is from a road trip I took with my family and their families to Puyo in the Pastaza province. 2. The view of Mt. Chimborazo from the rooftop of my house. 3. One of my workplaces: the...
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A Glimpse of Lagoa do Peri
Kendall Yee
2014-11-24
Have you ever seen an episode of National Geographic and wanted to jump through the screen to be right where they were? Or look through their magazines in awe and wish it was you visiting such a wondrous part of the world? As I was kayaking in Lagoa do Peri, it became surreal to me...
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My Rocky Stream of Consciousness
Elston Tortuga
2014-11-24
Writing used to come easily to me. It does now too; my swiftly improving cursive speaks for itself, but the polished creative writing and analytical essays I used to turn out for Lit & Comp feel out of reach. I suppose the ease resulted from a lacking of qualms when it came to embellishing; stories...
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