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 Importance of Family
Kimberly Reed-Hyman
2013-01-09
As the tears start to fall from my eyes, I try my best to hide the fact that I’m crying, but I’m doing a terrible job because my host mom is asking me what’s wrong. It’s a few days from Christmas and I’m at my first Ecuadorian family celebration. The family is here to glorify...
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Achote Excursion
Ella Wegman-Lawless
2013-01-09
It all started when my host mom came to my door and asked me if I would like to go to the Achote River. I of course wanted to get to know more and more of the land that surrounds my house so I said yes. When I walked outside to my delight and horror two horses were...
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Christmas Presents
Chloe Bash
2013-01-09
In an earlier blog post I discussed the dangerous generosity that directs the drinking culture here in Ecuador. This Christmas season, I experienced a greater and more expansive generosity that much better defines the character of my town. I woke up on December 22nd sure that my family and my friends had forgotten my birthday. There would be no...
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Can I have one?
Jordan Lee
2013-01-09
In case you didn’t know, there is an education crisis in the United States. According to a study published by the education frim Pearson, students from the U.S. rank 17th internationally, while those from Finland, South Korea, and China grabbed the top spots. Experts say that if something is not done soon, the U.S. should...
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Lightness
Anvy Tran
2013-01-09
I am the whimsical child of uninhibited Chaos and graceful Mutability. Great Chaos, whose company I am the most comfortable in. I am understood by you. To be filled with madness as we are; this exhilaration that keeps the mind awake. For others you are terror, but when I see your constant dance of freedom, I only feel...
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Classes and Condoms
Chloe Bash
2013-01-09
My breath quickened as I walked to the front of the class. Armed with foam drawings of bacteria and white bloods cells, I intended to demonstrate how HIV attacks the immune system to a group of forty giggling thirteen-year-olds. I had practiced my “charla,” full of new Spanish vocabulary, to my family and to my friends, but never to...
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Patience
Jackie Brown
2013-01-09
This is a speech I gave at one of our recent seminars. Even since I gave this speech I have seen improvement in both my classes and patience… I’d say it’s safe to say there is correlation between the two. About four months ago we were all sitting on the grassy field of Stanford. We all...
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Midpoint Reflection: What You Expected
Emily Hwang
2013-01-07
What you want is romance. unpretentious country folk with toothless grins and simple dreams of owning a washer and my 10,000 watt, bicultural, hot-off-the-college-prep-academy grill complexity quieting to a dull ommmmm Eat, Pray, Love style. What you expected were children and my 19 year old, non-Ecuadorian hands molding them like clay into my idea of model...
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When We Are Here
Carly Sitrin
2013-01-05
“We breathe. We pulse. We regenerate. Our hearts beat. Our minds create. Our souls ingest. 37 seconds, well used, is a lifetime.” -Mr. Edward Magorium Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium I lost my watch the other day. It fell out of a motorcycle taxi and I felt it graze my ankle as it leapt toward the...
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A Driving Force
Peyton Foley
2013-01-04
Life can get tough but I try not to let it get me down. What I mean is that life can’t put you down as long as you choose how to view it. I must admit however that it is really hard to deal with life when I can’t talk to someone about it. Living in Ecuador...
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It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World
Ely Kadish
2013-01-04
…But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl. Before arriving in Ecuador I read and was told many stories about the culture I would be living in, and one concept that constantly recurred was the idea of Machismo. In short it is the practice of a largely male dominated society — unequal work...
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Un Dia Ecuatoriano
Lydia Collins
2013-01-04
The following link is to a video that I made documenting the incredible life I am living down here. It is important to watch and process images of life here without judgement, but instead with curiosity. Why does that work? Are those people happy like that? What makes that system function? How can we improve that situation...
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