Where have you been? I’ve just been living to be honest! I’m in Senegal, Taiba Ndiaye to be exact. How much longer are you going to be out there? Well, as I am writing this it is February 2nd, so around 2 more months. How is it? That’s a loaded question. Some days I wake...
I left my home in Stonington, Connecticut in late August thinking that 7 months was a ridiculously long period of time. I thought I’d miss all my friends and my family, and I thought I’d want to come home before my time was up. Oh, how wrong I was. Of course, home is still home,...
I had heard about this time from many people …… “Lupi, you will have a lot of free time during this gap year. You must put it to good use.” But no one can really prepare you for what all these people meant. After the initial excitement of being in this new environment, I experienced...
Missed and Will Miss When February started it really hit me that I would be leaving my home in 2 short months. My plane ticket was bought and all of a sudden more and more people started to ask how long I have left here. This is when I realized just how much I am...
In October I realized that my gap year wasn’t going to be what I wanted it to be. I wanted to take a gap year to gain practical experience in environmental conservation before starting uni. Working at a tourism office doing mostly photo and video editing was not going to fulfil that goal. After some...
Misión Scalabriniana in a local parade holding up the sign “Humanidad”, or humanity. The pristine streets of Ibarra, or La Ciudad Blanca, seem to support order and proud Latin American solidarity, with street names of its Incan history and one of the most diverse populations I have seen in Ecuador. Yet, if we only peel...
I have grown beyond my limits this year. Living in Senegal has been both one of my biggest joys and my biggest hardships. When you are navigating a new space, culture and language, you must learn to adapt and change the way you function. In short, you learn to innovate. And I have to say…...
Living in Senegal, it’s impossible to avoid the endless references to the so called ‘west’. Actually, scratch that. It’s impossible to live anywhere without constant reference to North America and specifically the United States. Living in Thies Noon with my host family has exposed me to an innumerable number of conversations about the greatness of...