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 Good, The Bad, The Beautiful
Maddy Gibson
2019-05-21
*My experience has been complex, unique, and in no way a full representation of Ecuador, South America, or Latino culture as a whole.<3 “How was it?” “What is Ecuador like?” “Are you glad you went?” “Was it fun?” The answer I will most likely give will be something along the lines of: “It was incredible!”...
Read MoreAn Act Of Love
Isabel Clarkin
2019-05-21
An act of kindness in a time where I was feeling really low was when my host father taught me how to make his attaya (tea). The day before, I had just lost something very important to me; something that I had really defined my year for me up to that point. And one of...
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To the Wathie Family, With Love, Maam Faatu Toubab
Mia Reyes
2019-05-21
On the morning of pick up day, I woke up early at 6:00 to finish packing my room, and as I finished I sat down on my bed, looking at the family picture that my dad had made us take the night before, and wrote this, glimpses into the mountains of lessons I learned from...
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Fundamentally Different, Fundamentally The Same
Maya Foster
2019-05-20
My mother has created the perfect response to an imperfect question; when asked if her daughter returned from her gap year more “__________” (insert mature, worldly, grounded, etc.) or simply just “different,” she avoids a direct answer. Instead, she opts for an anecdote. I will preface this with the fact that I have this information...
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Sweet Rainfall
Maddy Gibson
2019-05-20
There is something comfortable about rainfall. The steady drip of a leaky gutter, a downpour in the middle of the night. It is familiar; it is unchanging. Rain is a constant here in Oregon and it wasn’t uncommon where I lived in Ecuador. In Imbabura, the rain usually comes in the night, settling the dust...
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Minha Familia, My family
Natalie Glick
2019-05-18
My last night with my host family my host mom Marcella said to me: “Você sempre será nossa filha.” You will always be our daughter. I often think about this. In the span of seven months, I went from a stranger to a daughter. My host families openness towards me is something I admire deeply...
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What I Did
Ara Vickers
2019-05-17
Note: These experiences were very specific to my apprenticeship, if you are a current applicant please be aware it is unlikely you will have the same position as I did. It has been a whirlwind of a year, and even after a month of being back in the United States, I am just now beginning...
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post-ecuador/pre-going-home
Surabhee Arjunwadkar
2019-05-17
A series of thoughts about a series of things attempting to address the question, “So, how was Ecuador?” 1. Going home has been different for everyone, Or so I’ve heard. I’m not home yet. And at this point, I don’t know if it is really home, or just an incredibly familiar place that...
Read MoreI Went to a Developing Country and Painted a Mural
Maria Bossert
2019-05-14
I know what it looks like. How cliche. But I am going to call it like it is; I went to a developing country and painted a mural. This mural was my Final Community Project, which was a required part of my gap year program. The goal of this project was to identify a problem...
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