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
Anecdotes from the First Week
Charlie Dickerson
2019-09-19
A little over a week ago, I left the comfort of my fellows and entered the real Ecuadorian world. Bit by bit, our cohorts had been shrinking. Starting as a global cohort of 150, we said our goodbyes after a week at Stanford. After a few days at a monastery in Quito, the Ecuador cohort...
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Small Moments
Sadie Price-Elliott
2019-09-19
Eight years ago, I started collecting small moments. At first, I recorded them on a misshapen heart map in the back corner of my writer's notebook. Then, I started jotting them down on sticky notes until my moments filled mason jars. Now, I take note of these little pockets of time in a beautifully bound...
Read MoreLanguage Arts
Emilya Ershtein
2019-09-18
In school, they call it “language arts”, the art of language. Personally, I never thought of it that way; the idea of spelling tests and grammar rules never felt very artistic. To my sister and I, they were all the less fun, as we came to American school with no knowledge of English because my...
Read MoreAn Email to my Parents, An Update
Lara Solis
2019-09-15
Dear Family, Being a teenager is exhausting. God the texting is idiotic. And so the lack of social media is quite refreshing. It feels like I’ve transcended the things I thought were essential, not in a huge way. But in a, “instagram is useless” way. My bed is too big, which is good but also...
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Ndomor, My New Home
Emma Peterson
2019-09-13
-Me and a few of my family members- As the school year came to an end, I started thinking seriously about how to prepare for my year in Senegal. What do you bring to a place that you can hardly even imagine? So I put together a bag filled with exactly 50.0 lbs of...
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Two Weeks In Transition
Sadie Price-Elliott
2019-09-13
Three weeks ago today, I said goodbye to the home that raised me. Two weeks ago, I landed in Ecuador. Now, I am in my new home. Nestled in a vibrant, rural landscape about an hour away from Cuenca, surrounded by crawling clouds and majestic mountains, and slowly but surely finding a new space...
Read MorePoco A Poco
Amelia Joss
2019-09-10
One of my host mom’s favorite phrases to say to me is “poco a poco”. Slowly, mija. The first day we met, she told me the story of her family, how her children miss their father but every day it gets better. Poco a poco. Each morning, she reassures me that I will...
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You Know You are in Senegal When
Drew Erickson
2019-09-10
You know you are in Senegal when… when “bug spray, sunscreen, malaria pill” becomes the most important part of your morning routine when you drift off to sleep to the sound of goats just outside your window when any and every conversation begins with a friendly “asalaa maalekum” when the power goes out almost… routinely ...
Read MoreMy playlist to Taranga
Wonu Falae
2019-09-09
There’s only one good way to go out. Not with a bang, or loud memorable moments, not with all smiles and a hopeful heart, not with doubts and fears either. It’s with a clear stream of consciousness and one simple phrase; “Press play”. That’s how I went out. Well, mostly……kind of?…..not really?..…wanted to? For the...
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