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
High, Low, High GO!
Kalea Moore
2013-02-27
HIGH, LOW, HIGH GO! Chimborazo has not been the easiest place to live. Basically the last 4 months have been a struggle. From people switching families, difficulty with apprenticeships and weight gain. But through all these struggles we have grown closer as a group. In our group we refer to the good things as “highs” and the not so...
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My Bird Story
Mai Lee
2013-02-27
About a week ago at my homestay in Palmarin, Senegal, a small yellow bird probably made one of the worst decisions of its life. This little fellow flew into my house, perhaps out of curiosity, only to be captured by my little siblings. When my 11-year-old sister caught it in mid-flight, my initial thought was,...
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Zoo Animals
Mai Lee
2013-02-27
Every passerby stares. Even a brief passing calls for double takes, especially with groups of children. Staring. Gawking. Examining. Even through my shades, my eyes alternate between looking straight ahead and a random object that I suddenly find oh-so-interesting. My hand adjusts its grip on my bag strap and I continue forward. Is there anything...
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An Ugly Perspective on Beauty
Claire Amsden
2013-02-27
I walk into the small beauty boutique with my sister and as she starts to bargain with the storekeeper for better prices my mind begins to wander. I look around, and I start comparing this store to beauty shops back home. I’m not talking about the differences like concrete floor to impressive sparkling tiles or...
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The Girl Double Effect
Jay Choi
2013-02-27
Senegalese girls are very strong—both physically and mentally. Every morning before school, my thirteen-year-old sister Saly does a good amount of chores—whether it be running errands for her mother to buy twenty cents’ worth of baguette and powdered milk from a boutique (shop) for my breakfast, or sweeping a dirt-covered cement porch to smoothness. She...
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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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