Fellow Stories
True gap year stories from Fellows abroad!
Check out the latest blogs from Global Citizen Year Fellows in Brazil, Ecuador, and India!
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Thank You for Participating
Sienna Walker
2012-04-24
I am late. Only by 10 minutes but late nonetheless. It’s a clear Monday morning, the sun isn’t yet scorching and the rains have passed. He isn’t phased. In baggy army shorts and bearing my life investment, a EOS Canon Rebel T3, he walks with swag. I throw my hair back into a bun as...
Read MoreThe Day that Life Begins
Priyanka Rao
2012-04-24
11am at work I decided I was going to the psychologist since the idea still clung after my 5am sanity jog along the Amazonian highway of Ecuador, where I am spending my gap year. By 12pm I had an appointment with Edda, the Clinical Psychologist and a bed with my original host family; by the...
Read MoreQuinceañera
Kirin Gupta
2012-04-24
“I know, I know she was gift.” “Love, then why do you not dress her? Why did you have trouble giving her your milk?” “She was a gift, but I did not ask for this.” Jeni sits across from me, eyes flicking from side to side, as though searching for an escape. “This is the...
Read MoreBetter In Time…
Elizabeth Warren
2012-04-17
Who can believe that it has already been eights months since I left my small town in Florida and came to live and volunteer in Ibarra, Ecuador. Only 18 years old and just out of high school, I was entering a whole other world and life than what I was used to. My first month...
Read MoreEcuaproblems
Elizabeth Warren
2012-04-17
In any country you go into you are more than likely going to run into problems, some may be bad or just plain funny. I have my share of problems here in Ecuador, which I like to call Ecuaproblems! First, one of the problems I struggled with when I first got to Ecuador was the...
Read MoreThe Big Red Machine
Nicolas Freschi
2012-04-17
In August, before leaving for our respective countries, the Global Citizen Year Fellows watched the movie Avatar together to help us understand our roles as foreigners entering a new culture in a faraway land. The alien race of the Na’vi is at one with nature while the human visitors are materialistic and tied...
Read MoreThe Price Free Spirits Pay
Holli Sullivan
2012-04-09
The Price Free Spirits Pay Traveling the world has various costs. We all know this now. There are passport and visa costs, plane tickets, and baggage fees. Then comes accommodation, food, and transportation. And what about souvenirs? How ‘bout that $200 guided hiking tour that you just have to go on? Maybe a few...
Read MoreTur
Paulina Personius
2012-04-02
I hear the sharp sound of the drum starting to lay down the beat of the song at the weekly dance called a “tur” that is held in my town for girls my age. Ran-tan-tan, ran-tan, ran-tan. Soon more drums join in and the beat is almost lost to my untrained ear in the cacophony...
Read MoreThe Uniform is All
Lucy Blumberg
2012-04-02
Senegal has taught me many things. The most important I would say is “just go with it.” “It” may be reading children’s books in Wolof to a group of toddlers, putting on beautiful clothes and pounds of make up only to have to take it off minutes later, or spontaneously becoming a member of the...
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