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
How to Pack Your Suitcase
Jordyn Voss
2017-04-26
1. Dig Out Your Suitcase No one likes living out of a suitcase. When you fumble through asking your host parents where you may have put that huge bag (honestly, where could it have gone in a house this size?), set it on the floor of your bedroom and open that sucker up. 2. Regret...
Read MoreThe Bubble
Fernanda Tornell
2017-04-25
Throughout our bridge year, GCY requires us to give a "speak up" at any one of our seminars. A speak up consists of a fellow standing in front of their cohort and giving a mini speech on whatever topic they prefer. I was chosen to give my speak up during the last seminar (TS3). I...
Read MoreI have Re-Entered
Julia Shankin
2017-04-22
My Global Citizen Year has now come to an end. I wasn’t expecting coming home to be harder than leaving, but watching my host family wave to me as I drove away was truly heartbreaking. When I left my family in the US to go on my big Brazilian adventure, I knew that I would...
Read MoreChallenging Home
Makenzie Leigh Meacham
2017-04-14
Before I went to Brazil, I worked in an acai shop. There acai was sold as a healthy treat for the hard working hikers and bikers of the touristy Sedona, just $12 a bowl. It was topped with fresh fruit and hemp seeds, vegan protein blended in, and sprinkled with yellow bee pollen that popped...
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Snapshots From Rio De Janeiro
Amari Leigh
2017-04-07
In mid-February, I was lucky enough to spend four days in one of Brasil's most colorful and vibrant cities-Rio de Janeiro! Like most people, I had many preconceptions about Rio before visiting. I had watched City of God (Cidade de Deus) and seen photos on the Internet of the massive, colorful favelas that fill the city. I...
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Easter Baskets
Amanda Hawks
2017-04-06
In my last few months of being in my host community I have found myself more busy than I found myself the entire time I had been at APAE (my apprenticeship working with people who have disabilities). Every year APAE has a project selling Easter Baskets for everyone in my community, and almost everyone I've...
Read Morehow to say goodbye
Kenya Barbosa-McCauley
2017-04-05
After we said our goodbyes and I drove away, tears rolled down my face and I bit the inside of my lip in an attempt to keep from sobbing out loud, even though I had already exploded in front of Mackenzie and Jordyn. I stared blankly out the window with tears rolling down my face,...
Read MoreAll of Me There
Makenzie Leigh Meacham
2017-04-05
I'm the type of person that can find absolute happiness in being alone. When other people are around me I feel this pressure, although almost unnoticeable, that I don't even recognize I'm feeling until everyone has left. It can be 10 people or it can be one, regardless of quantity the pressure is always there....
Read MorePartida
Alondra Quiles
2017-04-02
2 de abril de 2017 Amanhã de manhã, deixo minha família, minha casa ea comunidade que me acolheu. Como eu fiz isto até aqui? Lembro-me de estar com tanto medo de estar longe da minha família, pensando que eu nunca poderia crescer para amar outro, mas tudo mudou tão rapidamente. Dentro de algumas semanas eu...
Read Moretchauzinho
Kenya Barbosa-McCauley
2017-03-30
At a goodbye party last night I gave a speech entirely in Portugues written by me. Here below is what I delivered… since it was written in portugues I made a translation in English all though it is not exact because so many things cannot be expressed in English… I wasn’t able to attach the...
Read MoreElections in Brazil
Amanda Hawks
2017-03-28
These past six months have been a crazy roller coaster of incredibly experiences and also some pretty bad things as well. The bad things have been on my mind more frequently, as I constantly think about the DAPL, police brutality, and of course the results of the 2016 presidential elections. Trump, to me, was the...
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