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 Girl Effect: The Gender Roles in Palmarin
Jay Choi
2013-01-09
On September 29th—after a month of language and cultural training in Dakar—I finally arrived in my rural placement site in Senegal’s southern coast called Palmarin, the home of beautiful mangroves. In my family, I have three sisters—Oumi, Saly, and Awa—and two brothers—Jean and Alou. I’m privileged to have multiple siblings from both genders as my interaction with them has allowed me...
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Classes and Condoms
Chloe Bash
2013-01-09
My breath quickened as I walked to the front of the class. Armed with foam drawings of bacteria and white bloods cells, I intended to demonstrate how HIV attacks the immune system to a group of forty giggling thirteen-year-olds. I had practiced my “charla,” full of new Spanish vocabulary, to my family and to my friends, but never to...
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Patience
Jackie Brown
2013-01-09
This is a speech I gave at one of our recent seminars. Even since I gave this speech I have seen improvement in both my classes and patience… I’d say it’s safe to say there is correlation between the two. About four months ago we were all sitting on the grassy field of Stanford. We all...
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To Have Trash
Cheyenne Tessier
2013-01-09
The smell of burning waste seeps in through the open screens of my bedroom window. I came here to escape it. I thought that it would be far enough. It was us who raked the plastic next to the highway and added a bit of grass, so that it could burn quickly. It was me who bought...
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City Boy
Matthew Travers
2013-01-09
After living in New York City for a year, commotion has grown to be the norm for me. I thrive in the chaos, the shoulder-to-shoulder metropolitan density. My hometown of San Jose is a modestly urban city as well, which has led me to naturally gravitate towards a lifestyle full of traffic and Starbucks coffee shops...
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A chance to grow, learn, experience…Appreciate
Tasha Torres
2013-01-09
I live just outside the city limits of Kedougou in a house with a blue front door that I’ve come to know so well. I live with my dad (Baba Ibrahima), two moms (Nene Dialamba & Nene Ruggie), six brothers (Alseyni, Moustapha, Papa, Oumar, Aliou & Amadouwouri), one sister (Aissatou), and my grandma. After much...
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Immersion Through the Lens of a Looney Toon
Becky McClements
2013-01-09
Written November 3, 2012: It’s a Saturday afternoon and I’m escaping the unfathomably hot sun with my host dad in the shade of the mango tree in our compound. One of our neighbors, an incredibly goofy woman with a great sense of humor and dance moves to boot comes strolling up to us, swinging a big yellow bucket, which...
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The Difference Between Man and Wolf
Alan De Leon
2013-01-09
During the weekdays, I make a regular 30 minute walk to my apprenticeship organization’s headquarters. Back in Houston a similar trek would have been largely annoying – my car courts my laziness. I get a kick out of HQ every time I see it. It is an odd structure by common architectural standards: the outer...
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When We Are Here
Carly Sitrin
2013-01-05
“We breathe. We pulse. We regenerate. Our hearts beat. Our minds create. Our souls ingest. 37 seconds, well used, is a lifetime.” -Mr. Edward Magorium Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium I lost my watch the other day. It fell out of a motorcycle taxi and I felt it graze my ankle as it leapt toward the...
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