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
Life in Chimborazo, Ecuador
Fikrte Abebe
2013-01-04
So for the past two months I’ve been living with a completely indigenous family in the community of Mancheno, about an hour away from Riobamba, Chimborazo and working in an INFA center as well as a school where I teach English. I love my family; especially my grandmother who does a great job of making me feel like a...
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El Triunfo: A Drive Through the Tropical Side
John Villanueva
2013-01-04
It’s actually been a while since that time on the Ecuadorian coast: October 14, 2012, the day I made it to Guayaquil, the largest and most modernized city in Ecuador. My supervisors and I at Fundación UTOPIA attended a three day agro-ecological forum in Guayaquil that highlighted the Food Sovereignty Movement in Ecuador. It was inspiring: I soaked in...
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Allie Wallace
2013-01-03
I judge books by their covers. I’m not being euphemistic here, I just find that a book worth binding nicely and decorating with gold leaf and a ribbon bookmark is usually a book worth reading. You don’t see many books made like that anymore. But, surprisingly, these quality books pack the shelves of the little...
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Another Reality
Ava Hoffman
2012-12-18
Two million, nine hundred ninety eight thousand and fifty six people live in the city of São Salvador de Bahia de Todos os Santos ₁. Of that population, six hundred and eight thousand and nine hundred seventy six inhabitants live in extreme poverty. — Salvador is beautiful in its own way. Always bustling, Salvador never...
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Single Parenthood in the Andean Mountains
Tsion Horra
2012-12-11
One morning my host mother in Nizag and I were eating breakfast when I noticed the unusual abundance of eggs in the kitchen. Eggs, at $0.15 each, are expensive for my family. For this reason we eat eggs only occasionally. So I asked my host mom how we got them. My host mom bought the...
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Snippets of Life
Benito Aranda-Comer
2012-12-11
I find that when I actively look for something amazing, interesting, or out of the ordinary to happen in my life I come up short. My actions remind me of the saying, “a watched kettle does not boil.” There are so many beautiful and wondrous things to glimpse, learn, and understand here in Brazil it’s sometimes hard to get...
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Being Happy with Where You Are
Joshua Reason
2012-12-11
After our cohort’s first training seminar I was sick. It wasn’t anything serious, but nevertheless I decided that once I got back to Lençóis I would take it easy for a little while. I have been taking jiu jitsu classes for about a month now. I just bought a jiu jitsu kimono from Salvador before...
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The Pith and The Pit: Biting Deeper Into The Essence Ecuador
Aidan Holloway-Bidwell
2012-12-07
Having spent two months in Los Bancos, I have come to a time of analysis and reflection. This experience has thrown so many new and unexpected situations at me daily, that only until recently have I felt qualified to categorize events, reflect on similar aspects, and make certain comparisons. To bring life to these reflections...
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Competency
Meg Crenshaw
2012-12-05
I recently had a realization: While I was in the States, I was at least competent at the things I did in my daily life. Prepare breakfast? Check. Drive to school? Check. Lead a meeting? Check. Flush the toilet? Check. It’s a humbling experience to suddenly not be competent at everyday things. Flushing the toilet,...
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