Fellow Stories

Here

Elizabeth O'Malley

2015-01-31

Before I came to Ecuador, or fully understood my part as a Global Citizen Year Fellow, I didn’t have expectations for my time here. I started these eight months with an open mind and an open heart. And as cheesy as that may be, it’s the truth. I knew I would have a host family...

Correoucu, Ca̱ar, Ecuador

Elisa Portz

2015-01-31

Greetings from Correoucu, Ecuador! I have been living in my placement community for about three months now. My indigenous host family is more than I could ever ask for. I live with my host mother, Narcisa, host father, JosÌ© MarÌ_a, and my three host sisters: MarÌ_a JosÌ© (13), Sara (16), and Lourdes (18). We started...

Life, Death, and a Theory

Bennett Quintard

2015-01-29

Simple Pleasures

Charlotte Reider-Smith

2015-01-27

Enjoying the hail/rainstorm/flooding from the comfort of the car. Some cars were flooded in feet of water and the hail floated on top of the streams. Plantains – in all forms (fried, baked, in balls, sliced, with cheese) My new best friend Ariana (she‰Ûªs 10). I was waiting for my order of plantains (where her...

A Good Stretch Before Growth

Christobal Urquiaga

2015-01-27

To remove one’s self from a culture and language in which one has known their entire life and place themselves into a culture and language in which they have very little knowledge of (let alone experience with), takes a lot of strength. As the Team Leaders have told us numerous times, we must be prepared...

The Many Definitions of Sick

Christobal Urquiaga

2015-01-27

The longest time I have ever been away from my house and my family has been a week. As it has been five months of me away from my friends and family, I’ve begun to feel a bit sick. However, not just one definition of sick, but many different definitions of sick. Sick: Infected with...

Rooted

Lucas Weber

2015-01-26

My dad beat me with some plants, and I couldn’t be happier. That’s not a good way to start off a story, let me try again. There is a moment when you feel like you are becoming apart of a family, and that moment couldn’t have come at a better time for me. Living with...

Untitled

Bella Bjornstad

2015-01-26

I moved to Ecuador expecting to discover the oneness of humanity, to fall in love with the rich culture and warm people. But what I have, in fact, encountered is a stark reality: We are all partial to the ways of our homeland. No matter how much judgement I suspend and curiosity I exercise, I...

Breath

Lucas Weber

2015-01-09

I believe living in the moment, living without regrets, living for the story. The choices I make, the things I believe, are all shaped by the situation I am in. I used to be someone who obsessed over small interaction or conversation I knew I would have to have. I tortured myself over mistakes I...

Alive & Well

Isabel Nardi

2015-01-09

Last year I adopted a phrase, which in all honesty I probably ended up overusing, applying it to anything and everything. The phrase went like this, “No plans are the best plans.” For awhile it fit, but one day I have a revolution, sometimes you do need plans so the motto was altered, “No plans...

Symptoms Diagnostics

Sarah Richmond

2015-01-07

If there’s one thing I have plenty of here, it’s symptoms. Gathered with any other friend from Global Citizen Year, usually perched over an indulged cappuccino in a gringo cafÌ© in Riobamba, the topic inevitably floats into conversation. We file through our symptoms as we might flick through the synopses of this week’s episodes of...

On Walking, Sharing Space, and Our Mother‰’s Garden

Cierra Bland

2015-01-06

Virginia Woolf wrote further, speaking of course not of our Phillis [Wheatly], that ‰ÛÏany woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century [insert ‰ÛÏeighteenth century,‰Û insert ‰ÛÏblack woman,‰Û insert ‰ÛÏborn or made a slave‰Û] would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village…a highly...