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
So, you came to find yourself in Senegal?
Guzly Guzman
2014-02-23
So there we all were looking down at the small crowd of host family members that had come to collect us for our first home stays in Dakar. One by one we were introduced and walked out the hotel to start our “Senegalese” lives. I remember my heart pounding like crazy as my eyes scanned the faces trying to see...
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Alumni Post: 1 + 4
Lydia Collins
2014-02-21
When I decided to attend Tufts in the spring of 2012, I simultaneously made another life-changing decision — to not go to Tufts. Right away, that is. I deferred my admission until the following year and signed up to spend a year in Ecuador with a program called Global Citizen Year. Global Citizen Year is...
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Pelucona
Madeline Lisaius
2014-02-20
What does privilege mean to you? Don’t worry – I’m not going to define privilege “in my own words” or give you a dictionary definition as a way to subtly suggest that your definition is wrong. What I DO believe, though, is that my personal definition has a lot to do with the environment I am in and...
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In the Land of Women
Allie McKinney
2014-02-20
I’ve always been captivated by stories of the green tomato South. The ones where white babies are raised by loving, cheeky black nannies. And even though they face great oppression, everyone sits around laughing and eating banana pudding. Who wouldn’t want that? I think what really draws me in to those stories is just how powerful the black characters are. These...
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A Night & A Morning in Kebemer
Jahshana Olivierre
2014-02-20
I often spend these seemingly endless nights tossing and turning, engulfed in an ill- setup but well intentioned mosquito net. I’m at war – combating a billion different species of bugs, trying to eat me alive, and even when I see the twenty or so casualties I’ve inflicted my efforts fall short. The bugs continue to terrorize...
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I Guess I’m Not Getting Married
Rachel Teevens
2014-02-20
My niece just told me I can’t do anything. I can’t cook. I can’t clean my clothes. I can’t sweep. I can’t clean the dishes. I can’t do anything. And due to these facts I will apparently never find a Senegalese husband. Now you might think that here I should insert a feminist rant about...
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My New Bike
Cameron Carrick
2014-02-19
Dear cherished reader, I realize that it’s been a while since my last post and for that I apologize. It’s proven much more difficult than I originally anticipated to bring a blog from conception to your screens. Posting requires a delicate coordination of weather, willpower, paper-to-binary money transfers, patience, concentration, timing, and after all that...
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Just The Two of Us
Russell Gens
2014-02-14
For the past three months I have been living in La Victoria de Pusuca, a town of thirteen families about an hour outside of the city of Riobamba. In this tiny town, I’ve come to make up exactly one half of one tiny family. I spend almost every waking hour of my life with my host mom, Charito....
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Parent Blog: Lessons From Global Citizen Year
Global Citizen Year
2014-02-06
The following post comes form Jules Kaufman, father of Charlotte Kaufman (Ecuador ’14). In early January we visited Charlotte, who is living in a Quichua community 15 minutes on foot from Mesahualli, Ecuador. We had arranged to meet her in a small town on the Napo River to start our visit with a short stay...
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