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 Value of Protips
Libby Parker-Simkin
2013-07-30
Occasionally, I get in over my head. I like to try new things, so sometimes I apply, sign up, and volunteer for things I am not necessarily prepared for. In some cases I can figure out what to do and adapt, but in others my lack of experience causes problems. On one adventure, my youth...
Read MoreBlank Journal
Christina Joyce
2013-07-26
When I was younger, and I got a new journal for a birthday or Christmas, I would flip through the blank pages and wonder about what I would write about, what the future held. I am getting a similar feeling now. I can hardly believe that for the first time in my life, I am not going back to...
Read MoreWho am I
Jocelyn Aguayo
2013-07-24
Hi everyone, my name is Jocelyn Aguayo and I am from Oakland, California. The idea of me taking a gap year before I heading off to college all started last summer when I went to Matagalpa, Nicaragua. The purpose of the trip was to focus on education awareness in the world. I had the chance to experience...
Read MoreIntroduction
Aden Gilmour
2013-07-24
My name is Aden Gilmour and I will be going to Ecuador this September. I did not get the idea to take a bridge year until I started my college visits. After touring a number of schools, I was sitting with an admissions officer and they asked me if had considered doing a gap year program. I had...
Read MoreNarwhals Go To Ecuador
Carol Brown
2013-07-24
This time last year, a burly black guy from Brooklyn, also known as to me as teddy bear and best friend, nicknamed me ‘white chocolate’. I began learning about the Black Power movement from a mixed race woman born in Chicago at a time when my ancestors in Tennessee may still have been racist. A...
Read MorePiranhas Won’t Eat You
Joanna Shieh
2013-07-23
As I anxiously await my bridge year to Santa Catarina, Brazil, my friend Idalina sends me a CNN article titled, “10 things to know before visiting Brazil”, by Joe Robison. I read the article, over and over again, laughing and becoming even more intrigued by Brazil’s interesting, and crazy culture. There are no introverts in Brazil. When I visited Brazil in...
Read MoreI am Chan Mi, an exotic pizza!
Chan Mi Joo
2013-07-23
I am not your typical pizza. In fact, you may find my combination of ingredients to be strange, exotic, or just plain ol’ different. Let me explain: Seoul of South Korea. Nairobi of Kenya. Rhode Island, California, and Alaska of America. All these locational ingredients have each left unique and strong impacts on my life: Step 1: Pizza dough that...
Read MoreJust the beginning
Emily Gray
2013-07-22
During my sophomore year of high school I made the decision that I wanted to travel before going to college. I wasn’t sure where or how I was going to make this happen, but I knew that this was something I really wanted, and I was going to do anything in my power to make it so. When junior...
Read MoreWho? What? Where? Why?
Yani Alexander
2013-07-22
School isn’t the real world. It’s artificial. Half the information you learn you will never use or will forget. That’s what people say, and they may be right. I just want a chance to try to use the other half. In high school I learned about how histories of oppression, hatred, war, genocide and slavery have created the social inequities...
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