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 Day that Life Begins
Priyanka Rao
2012-04-24
11am at work I decided I was going to the psychologist since the idea still clung after my 5am sanity jog along the Amazonian highway of Ecuador, where I am spending my gap year. By 12pm I had an appointment with Edda, the Clinical Psychologist and a bed with my original host family; by the...
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Quinceañera
Kirin Gupta
2012-04-24
“I know, I know she was gift.” “Love, then why do you not dress her? Why did you have trouble giving her your milk?” “She was a gift, but I did not ask for this.” Jeni sits across from me, eyes flicking from side to side, as though searching for an escape. “This is the...
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We Are One
Molly Owens
2012-04-19
Universality is a word I have truly connected to throughout this experience in Ecuador. As I boarded the plane to my new life back in August, I dreamed of making new friends and blending in easily into my Ecuadorian family but I never even imagined how deep the connections could be. While I feel at...
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Mission: Carnaval
Lindsey Sepulveda
2012-04-17
Mission Name: Carnaval in Coangue 2012 Date: February 20th and 21st Objective: To get yourself and every living object in site as dirty as possible, using water (from the river), paint, flour, eggs, and only in desperate cases use mud. Execution Plan: Plan to catch a bus at 9 a.m. Wait in line for an...
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Vitamins
Galen Burns-Fulkerson
2012-04-17
Two weeks ago, I cried as I took my daily multivitamin. I’m not the kind of person who has trouble taking pills, and despite the size of my vitamins, I can usually get them down pretty easily. The last time I can remember crying about taking pills was when I was three or four and...
Read More Better In Time…
Elizabeth Warren
2012-04-17
Who can believe that it has already been eights months since I left my small town in Florida and came to live and volunteer in Ibarra, Ecuador. Only 18 years old and just out of high school, I was entering a whole other world and life than what I was used to. My first month...
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Ecuaproblems
Elizabeth Warren
2012-04-17
In any country you go into you are more than likely going to run into problems, some may be bad or just plain funny. I have my share of problems here in Ecuador, which I like to call Ecuaproblems! First, one of the problems I struggled with when I first got to Ecuador was the...
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The Big Red Machine
Nicolas Freschi
2012-04-17
In August, before leaving for our respective countries, the Global Citizen Year Fellows watched the movie Avatar together to help us understand our roles as foreigners entering a new culture in a faraway land. The alien race of the Na’vi is at one with nature while the human visitors are materialistic and tied...
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The Strings of my Heart
Galen Burns-Fulkerson
2012-04-02
Ecuador has tugged at my heartstrings plenty of times. I still remember how I felt the first time (and the second and the third… and maybe the fiftieth too) I saw the views from Pimampiro. When my little host brother told me that he loved me for the first time, I smiled from ear to...
Read MoreConnect Four
Sienna Walker
2012-03-30
In the past month, I spent a handfull of days in and out of the hospital, having CAT scans and blood tests, with an undecided but looming pre-diagnosis of tuberulosis. Much to my appreciation, my Quito host family took me in during those dramatic days. And one night during my stay, my sister invited me...
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Rosa Victoria: World Traveler
Welcome Frye
2012-03-30
While on the way to Misahuallí to start Training Seminar 3 with the other Napo Fellows, I took my seat next to an elderly Ecuadorian woman sound asleep with her head resting against the bus window. A few minutes later, a particularly bumpy section of road jolted her awake and, upon hearing my English conversation...
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Words From Ecuador
Lily Ellenberg
2012-03-30
I am from eight thirty bedtimes and rising with the sun. From devious little cousins and younger siblings. From fresh fruit juice, ecua-shoes, and a new system of time. From seemingly shy women and overtly forward men. From fried yucca, comidas tipicas and yogoso sabor a naranja. I am from open-air classrooms, school uniforms and...
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