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
A New Family
Elizabeth Warren
2011-11-08
We had been in Quito for four days and the next day, we were meeting our Quito families, who we would be living with for the next month. The night before and that same morning, we were filled with excitement and nervousness, wondering how our stays would turn out and what living with a family...
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Seeing Ibarra
Elizabeth Warren
2011-11-07
Sometimes you may be looking, but not really seeing. This was something I had experienced during my first visit to Ibarra, I was here for a week to meet my family, to visit my job, and also to see where I´ll be living over the next seven months, but even though I was in a...
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Two Machetes and an Axe: We Come in Peace
Kirin Gupta
2011-11-07
Smoke curled under blackened plantains on a wood tray that hung above the open fire. Flames licked up from a pit sunken into the mud floor. It was my first Sunday in Cotundo, Ecuador and my host mom and I had hiked for miles to visit her mother’s farm – the epitome of a campo,...
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Goodbyes
Galen Burns-Fulkerson
2011-11-07
I didn’t expect to get so close to my host family in Quito. Before arriving, I figured I would spend some quality time with them during my training and then move on to my longer home-stay with little trouble. This is not what happened at all. After a month with my wonderfully helpful and incredibly...
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Expand the Impression
Antonio Peluso
2011-11-06
For my last blog post I wrote about the reality of poverty in Salvador and how one could get left with an impression that doesn’t reflect the reality. After later experiences, I am glad I titled the last post as “At First Glance” because soon after it was published, I would get handed my own...
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My name is Fallou Beye
Samuel Parson
2011-11-03
There are three kinds of us with the chance to live in this world. There’s one kind that lets the world revolve around them with a forever unchanging attitude and a cold shoulder to even the bare thought of growth, there’s another that really embraces challenge with wide-open arms and a fast-driving desire to build...
Read MoreIn a Man’s World…
Brian Baylor
2011-11-03
Feeling a part of something is a high in itself, and recently I peaked in a situation that I’ve never experienced before. Earlier today I worked with my uncle in the local cemetery. This is no ordinary cemetery though; what’s special about this cemetery is that it has both Catholic and Muslim family members in...
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Pondering
Natalie Davidson
2011-11-03
I’m sitting in the courtyard at my grandmother’s house on a brightly patterned woven mat on the ground. The sun is no longer beating directly overhead and the shade beneath the huge tree provides a cool comfort perfect for napping. Eight beautiful women surround me – each wrapped in vivid Senegalese cloth, laughing, singing, and...
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Trash, Trash, Trash
Charlotte Benishek
2011-11-03
One of the most prominent features of the average street in my rural village of Leona, aside from the sand, is the trash. It lines the streets — mainly plastic bags, packaging, the occasional discarded sandal. Plastic and processed goods have reached rural Senegal, but there is simply no centralized location to discard them when...
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