Fellow Stories
True gap year stories from Fellows abroad!
Check out the latest blogs from Global Citizen Year Fellows in Brazil, Ecuador, and India!
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Class Year
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The Other Side of the Fence
Cameron Kaufman
2010-12-06
I recently started working at a day care for underprivileged children in Cayambe, Ecuador. Just the other day I tucked in a six month old to bed with a blanket reading “Beautiful Baby” (in English), accompanied by a picture of a smiling blond, blue-eyed baby. This was most certainly not an accurate representation of the...
Read MoreVideo From Caminata al Quinche
Lily Shaffer
2010-12-03
On Saturday, November 20, I went on the Caminata al Quinche with three other fellows, Pete, Caroline, and Omar, and the family who owns La Choza, an organization Pete´s been working with. I took some videos during the plilgramage and put them together in a little video. Hopefully it will give you a sense of...
Read MoreLa Caminata al Quinche
Peter Saudek
2010-12-03
La Caminata al Quinche, or the ‘hike to Quinche’ is a yearly tradition through the Roman Catholic church in which hundreds of thousands of people from Ecuador and all around the world travel to a region in Ecuador to participate in an all-night pilgrimage to reach the church, Quinche. The majority of the people who...
Read MoreC is for Calor
Liza David
2010-12-03
I was incredibly excited to go to the monthly meeting. Naturally, seeing all the Fellows that I had not been able to contact and to hear about their apprenticeships was a highlight, but the thing that I looked forward to having the chance to take a shower. After having previously been told that the shower...
Read MoreYou Get What You Need
Joe Giallo
2010-12-03
(The following conversation between me and my advisor has been both paraphrased and translated from Spanish. This is also just one small portion of a much larger conversation, and it’s constructed from memory, so don’t go quoting this exactly.) My entire body ached as I finally sat down in front of Edmundo, the president of...
Read MoreIn Which I Forget my Shoes, Play with Fire, and Learn the Letter “H”
Liza David
2010-12-02
You know how you run around the house making sure that you have everything you need and then you leave the house with a sense that you forgot something-something quite important? Well that happened to me. I left the house with a foreboding feeling that I forgot something. And I did. I forgot my shoes....
Read MoreMy new life, in pictures
Liza David
2010-11-24
Take a look at a photo essay I put together introducing my new life in Ecuador: [slidepress gallery=’liza-david-1st-slideshow’] Note: Move your mouse over each photo to see the captions!
Read MoreSunrises
Joe Giallo
2010-11-22
As many of you are likely aware, I have a rather… interesting sense of humor, which I share with the world at any given opportunity. I have a passion and, if I do say so myself, talent for puns and wordplay that you won’t really find anywhere else. If I’d had my choice of talents in life, I wouldn’t...
Read MoreA Familiar Scene
Cameron Kaufman
2010-11-19
About three weeks ago, I made the long awaited transition to my new host family, who I will be living with for the next six months. I was overwhelmed by the suddenness of the transition that I had blown up to such large proportions in my mind ever since my acceptance to GCY. Minutes after my...
Read More¨Holy Toledo!¨
Peter Saudek
2010-11-19
I´m working in the communications office with one of my advisors on the upstairs of the cultural center I volunteer at, when three women who are friends of my advisor enter and sit down. After my advisor introduces us, one of the women faces me and says something that sounds like ¨Howee toreeo.¨ My first...
Read MoreA day in my life in the Village of Zuleta
Omar Arteaga
2010-11-16
Every day I wake up at six in the morning to get ready for school where I help students improve their English. I teach at a small high school which has a total of no more than ninety students. When I get done eating breakfast I say good bye to my little siblings, Enoc and Sarita,...
Read MoreReady or not, here I go!
Caroline Pocock
2010-11-15
I had been in this tiny indigenous community for less than a week when I arrived at the elementary school, eager to begin the first day of my apprenticeship. I was a little anxious about the fact that I hadn’t the slightest clue as to what I was going to be doing, but faithfully optimistic...
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