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 Importance of Ankle Weights
Camille LeBlanc
2013-02-27
I have never sweat like I sweat in Bahia. The beating 6 am sun jolts me awake, the overcrowded bus leaves tears of sweat dripping down my back, but nothing competes with the gym, where I could nearly flush a toilet with the sweat of a single workout. But oh, how it is good. Last December, after months...
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How To Make Friends
Lydia Collins
2013-02-26
Dear Reader, Below I arranged a combination of rules, guidelines, and recommendations on how to make friends. These skills were learned in a local market in a city of 100,000 in northern Ecuador. They are results of trial and error, embarrassment, laughs, and smiles. Most steps were learned while making friends with food vendors in a market. For example, a...
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Spanish Language
Sarah McMillan
2013-02-26
Learning Spanish through immersion is one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Not that I’m done, but it’s pretty amazing to be doing. You notice more about your own language, too. For example, English is pretty rigid, sentence structure-wise. In Spanish, you can put words all over the place and it still makes a decent sentence. It’s great...
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Camera Shy?
Jordan Ricker
2013-02-26
When I first got to site in Mboro, almost five months ago now, my 12-year old sister was totally OK with me taking pictures of her. She even took my iPad and took pictures of herself with it. However, as I’ve spent more time here, and as she had her 12th birthday in October, she...
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To The Moon
Emily Collins
2013-02-26
In the 1950’s, a radio show came out to inspire Americans in a time of uncertainty. “This I Believe” has currently been reawakened, and even brought into the form of a book. People from all across the United States can write about all forms of love they have possessed in their lives. I was smart...
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Speak up: We are beautiful and should know it
Chinyere Aniagoh
2013-02-26
I just wanted to share with you something I’ve been fighting against all my teen life and considerable more since I have gotten to Ecuador, and I honestly don’t believe there is a person in the world who hasn’t suffered from this problem at one point in time. This fight is against low esteem and body image. First I would...
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All That Is Soulful and Soothing
Devani Santos
2013-02-26
1:37 am. Just got done watching, or more like performing, High School Musical in Portuguese with my little sister, and now I’m listening to “By Your Side” by Sade. It just hit me. I’m living the good life. I was just thinking of how blessed I’ve been to have had incredible opportunities repeatedly thrown at...
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Global Citizenship and Global Citizens
Sammy Gachagua
2013-02-26
When I was a junior in high school, we had to write a ten page paper on a topic of our choice. I chose global citizenship and defined a global citizen as that person who travels the world, speaks many languages, and has visited dozens of countries. I therefore included myself in the category, as...
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The Meaning of Being Trilingual
Alan De Leon
2013-02-26
In the beginning of my elementary schooling, the only language I knew how to speak was Spanish. As a Mexican-American, it is my native tongue; English is my second language. I started reading books in English when I was in Kindergarten, even though I didn’t know what the words meant. So I guess that means that I was not...
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