Priyanka Rao, Author at Global Citizen Year

Capstone Video

Priyanka Rao

June 28, 2012

This is a video I made for my Global Citizen Year Capstone. I hope you enjoy seeing the world as I saw it this past year! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-MYEiK5wIM

Reflections on The Blue Sweater

The Entrepreneur steps onto the scene of the developing world, and snaps her trained fingers… only to find that third-world countries don’t follow the same rhythm she does. As Jacqueline Novogratz begins down the path of international development, she faces many of the trials we do as Global Citizen Year (GCY) Fellows: high school graduates...

The Day that Life Begins

Priyanka Rao

April 24, 2012

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...

Sounds Like Me

Priyanka Rao

March 22, 2012

In my little wooden room in the Amazon, I will sometimes spend hours under the cracks of light that sift through the wooden boards, and watch as my three lives begin to make sense. The Hindi, the Spanish, the English. Maybe you can take a minute, to lay there with me. In the Amaden, District...

Woven Together

Priyanka Rao

March 22, 2012

Thoughts are woven together in interesting patterns. Perhaps this string of journal clippings will give you a snapshot of the passing of time in Ecuador, and even a sense of that tentative undying hope we Global Citizen Fellows seemed to be imbued with: Sunday 16th October: Hello again. It’s late at night and I wanted...

Biodiversity

Priyanka Rao

January 9, 2012

I’ve been waiting to encounter the famed biodiversity of the Amazon. I have pictures of the yellow green butterfly I picked nearly dead off the highway, and of the green frogs that hopped in when it rained too hard for too long. The carpenter ants never stop...

Poco a Poco

Priyanka Rao

December 10, 2011

Today, I’m just quieter in general, so I’m getting less Spanish intake; yesterday’s exhaustion and headache justify my taking a break. Today I am sitting next to Alejo, with the privilege of listening to his iPod with him. With his twinkle-eyes and long eyelashes, he is trying to practice his English because he hopes to...

Caves

Priyanka Rao

December 9, 2011

Today we are going to the Jumandy Caverns- the beloved tourist site of the inhabitants of the Napo province. I have expectations of a little cave, trash, people. We enter with lanterns on our foreheads and the clean but slippy weight of water-filled boots. We reach the rock (i) black and solid, as formed by...

Sifting Through

Priyanka Rao

November 30, 2011

Yesterday evening while sweeping the patio floor, I had a moment of realization. Examining the line of my life, I saw America, the sidewalk before me. And India, the concrete floor, and here I was sweeping the wooden slats of a Latin American patio, in a country verdant green, with the calls of chickens. ...

Finding Family II

Priyanka Rao

November 30, 2011

I got to go to the river the other day with my family in order to shower and wash my clothes because there was no water in the tank at home. This time I was prepared with dirty clothes and a skirt to change. I was relieved to find that this was only a laundry...

Finding Family

Priyanka Rao

November 11, 2011

Day Two on the ELA Sumaco tour with the entire class of 24 students, driver and conductor of the bus, Mary and Patricia of the National Parks Association, and Rocío (my boss), Luis, and me. I started out very discouraged at my ignorance, but I’ts taken me a day to acclimatize to the point where...

To the Bathroom

Priyanka Rao

October 14, 2011

It’s 3:41 in the morning, and I just got back quivering into my bed. I’d had to go pee for several hours but hadn’t figured out how I would make it alive. I knew I was living in the rainforest region but this truly clarifies: I am living IN it. The rain droplets can be...

Sin Bici No Hay Paraiso

Priyanka Rao

October 1, 2011

Just coming back from Cumbaya, the cutest town in Ecuador, and suffering from the paradise syndrome. A stucco church with bell tower edges a hedge-rowed garden park complete with a trickling fountain in the center. Boutiques surround the square across a cobblestone road that leads past the mission-style Educativo where the uniformed school-children are getting...

Arrival

Priyanka Rao

October 1, 2011

I’m here bumping along on the road to Tena. We drove through flat lands of farms and now we are going through those mountain roads that follow a river up through the wallowing hills. It’s all the browns and greens of moss and heather. Clay- the ground is saturated with water. And we feel very...

Ask

Priyanka Rao

October 1, 2011

I have been very proud to learn how to ask questions, not only questions that arise in the end-of-a-chapter Review, but the ones that actually reflect what I am thinking. The ones that reflect the true issues that complicate me, but also questions that can bring out very interesting answers. Effective questions. They give me...

Meet, Cheese and Olives

Priyanka Rao

September 29, 2011

My first family outing was to a baby shower–it was a solid evening. By the time it was time to go, I decided my Indian outfit would pass for something unique at least, to avoid the other judgments. It was a nice town-house out in the mountainside with lots of nice people to kiss on...

Flight

Priyanka Rao

September 15, 2011

Here we are in to Atlanta – flying over it at the moment. “Starting our descent.” Left at 4 am this morning to the extenuating circumstances of leaving 31 soul-mates that I met last week. I am awake to say the most of this situation, since I have been falling in and out of a doze...

Why We’re Here

Priyanka Rao

September 15, 2011

Training hit hard. Standing over my 28 lbs suitcase, I only think “I didn’t pack for this.” I didn’t have the shorts, the appetite or the expectations for two beautiful weeks inStanford University, California. Training hit hard. It hit with the punch of 56 different personalities from across theUnited States, gearing up for a year...

Why I’m Here

Priyanka Rao

July 5, 2011

Traveling has been always a passion of mine, since those initial bus-rides ‘round the Hydrabadi loop (India), which was all my mother could do to quiet my infant cries. Even then, the entrancing rhythm of being in motion, underneath the hum and roll of people talking, brought me home like nothing else could, just as...