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
drowning in debt in brazil
Veronica Barrera
2018-12-20
To start off this story let me tell you about my apprenticeship: I work at a underprivileged and pernicious location known as a *favela. *It’s an afterschool program for kids ages 4-16 and they spend around 4 hours playing soccer, training muy thai / Brazilian jiu jitsu, acting classes, or playing with toys and their...
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Between the Lines
Laura Harvey
2018-12-18
In taking a gap year, I made the decision to learn by looking up. For a nerd like me, admitting that you can’t learn everything with your nose in a book can be painful. Admittedly, I would still dive straight into a library if I were looking for nuclear theories or a chronology of the...
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Escritos
Sophie Auvin
2018-12-18
Middles: I have a theory all middles are the same. All the nowheres filled with flat fields and sparse trees. Where roads cut through rocks still bearing the marks of the earth. With grazing cows and muddy rivers. The spaces between are carbon copies of each other. Driving in the nowhere, I can be...
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At Peace with Clichés
Danielle Katz
2018-12-14
[image: image.png] It’s the intricacies in the ways our minds process the world. The mannerisms that you can’t express to other people, because your circuit is way too personal to be articulated, and you could never do it justice. But, more beautiful than being able to express your own peculiarities is when someone else does...
Read MoreAn Introspective into Impacto Vivo
Sophie Auvin
2018-12-07
Thursday, December 6th marked my last day at Impacto Vivo, a local organization providing an after-school program to low-income kids. In this moment I am incredibly conflicted about the project closing and being forced to seek out new opportunities. While I never would have left the organization on my own, part of me is relieved...
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Discovering Brazil
Sophie Auvin
2018-11-28
This Saturday will mark not only the start of summer here in Brazil but also my first three months in-country. It is weird to think about how just under 90 days ago, I arrived in Florianopolis knowing nothing about Brazilian language or culture. So, to celebrate all that I have learned and all that is...
Read MoreInterviewing with Rocks in my Mouth
Ariella Brodie-Weisberg
2018-11-25
Upon arriving in Garopaba, a feeling of unwelcomeness seeped into every space I occupied, both internal and external. I felt too intense, too radical, too political too masculine, too much of too many things. I considered my queerness, something that informs most of what I do, to be a great burdon. I did not see...
Read MoreLive From The Field
Luis Juarez
2018-11-14
How I Became Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. Interestingly enough, I see my first step off the plane as my first step on my journey back home. If I view this experience as a whole, it’s easy to see that it begins to end the moment it begins, and only stops ending once it’s over. While...
Read MoreTwo months in the land of Açaí.
Marco Barracchia
2018-11-10
And maybe yes, I should have written my blog on a daily basis. That was my plan, initially. A perfect start of my gap year resuming every day what it was like living in a new country, immersing myself into a new context, new language, new people. However, the start of my gap year took...
Read MoreWhat’s With the Rush?
Ara Vickers
2018-11-10
From an early-age, I was taught that there were two paths in life. One, towards the “American Dream” and one towards fast-food worker purgatory. To reach this “American Dream” one must not just succeed, but succeed young. Youth is a modern commodity, the younger you know your path, the more likely your chance at success...
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Finding Happiness in Lonely Moments
Grace Sander
2018-11-08
I’ve spent about two months here in Florianópolis, Brazil in a touristic neighborhood called Lagoa Da Conceição. The island’s stunning beaches, hiking trails, and the lagoon being filled with people paddle boarding, wind surfing, or jet skiing had me convinced that I had landed in paradise. My host family immediately stole my heart too. Maria,...
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