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
Choice and Belonging
Trina Olsen
2015-10-06
I wrote this blog two days before I left for Ecuador, but didn’t feel ready to post it yet. Now, it is October 5th and I feel ready to share it. Finding and choosing where you belong after high school is difficult. For my entire life, the place I’ve spent the majority of my time...
Read MoreMy First Week in the CIA
Daniel Lewis
2015-10-02
I work at the CIA. I translate press releases, make videos, edit powerpoint presentations and have a lot of time to kill. My coworkers are not spies, they are entrepreneurs; all hard at work making their dreams reality. I work in the Centro de Inovaçâo in Florioanopolis, a building off of a main highway brimming with tech...
Read MoreGoals for my Global Citizen Year
Hugo Santiago
2015-10-02
#1) Check off bucket list… Screw it-you know? Can’t help but think this is a GREAT time in my life, not to mention I don’t have to worry about any college assignments, extra jobs, curricular activities or whatever! I’m 17 and can practically do whatever I want-so I’m going to go out and do what...
Read MoreBucket List
Hugo Santiago
2015-10-02
Ecuador GCY Bucket List: Memoranda- Here are my original bucket list ideas that I wrote out during immersion week, decided to do a bit of editing (in parathesis) after thinking about what I really wanted from my Global Citizen Year. #1) Go to a bar after turing 18 (obviously not to drink, I just want...
Read MoreThe Power of Music
Noah Hapke
2015-10-01
It’s no surprise that I’m writing this while listening to music. Sitting on my bed in my mom’s gigantic pancho, playing some Lykke Li with my headphones in my ears and the coldness surrounding the rest of me. When I’m sad, or rather just thinking about home and people I miss, I always remind myself...
Read MoreThe Talibe
Jackson Harris
2015-10-01
On Understanding My Purpose in Senegal Written on September 28 Hold out one of your hands. Spread your fingers apart. Collapse your thumb, ring finger, and pinkie. What do you see? If you did it correctly, you might be thinking of long-hair, San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury, or The Beatles. Let’s try again. Hold out one...
Read MoreDay One
Miyo McGinn
2015-10-01
6:30 am – I wake to the sound of barking dogs. Feeling the cold air on my face (the only part of me not clothed in fleece and under five blankets) I decide to remain in bed. 7:00 am – a growing need to pee, combined with a knock on my bedroom door, drive me out of bed...
Read MoreRoad to Ibel
Janet Sebastian-Coleman
2015-09-29
At five in the morning on September 19th Abby and I hustled through the dark streets of Dakar. We crossed the familiar highway, now void of the car rapides, taxis, horses, and buses that usually zip by as we make the trek to school and the office. Abby and I reach the office early and sit on the stoop...
Read MoreAnd I had a name and it wasn’t Tubaab
Armi Katariina Kauppila
2015-09-29
When at night I grab the small plastic teapot that lives in my room and walk to the water place at the backyard to fill it up for my last visit to the outside toilet of the day, I can see stars. According to them the world continues outside of my house. I was cleaning...
Read MoreExtremely late;
irene subervi
2015-09-29
<originally written August 25, 2015>Curitiba Not everyone knows how to dance samba, 3. Soccer – isn’t on m Pre-Departure, We are young, but our minds have already left our bodies searching for more. We are strong, yet we cry when the chance is given. We love, forgetting that we all have just met. ...
Read MoreAnd there were dreams in the island
Armi Katariina Kauppila
2015-09-29
This morning I woke up giggling, for I dreamt that a soap opera made an episode about filling up the shelves of a supermarket. I couldn’t recall where I was for a while. Then I found myself in a mosquito net castle. Airplanes fly over our house so near I’m sure if the windows had...
Read MoreAnd the puddles were actually parts of a soup
Armi Katariina Kauppila
2015-09-28
I open my computer with a purely voluntary intention of reaching my parents, and pick up the piece of paper that drops on my hotel bed from between the lid and the keyboard. But the note, written by that polite man at the reception, sees daylight only to find itself useless. For the two, maybe...
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