Fellow Stories

Answering questions I get the most!

Zion Barnett-Bishop

2020-02-09

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...

Moving in the opposite direction

Christine Alhalabi

2020-02-08

Ya Falta Poco Tiempo

Abigail Mann

2020-02-08

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,...

Some things I would like to remember

Anupama Sanjith

2020-02-07

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...

Blog 5

Hadley Duquette

2020-02-06

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...

What I learned in Ecuador

Aniska Bitomsky

2020-02-06

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...

"La Ciudad Blanca"

Sofia Santos

2020-02-06

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...

Presenting the New Nikola Tesla

Drew Erickson

2020-02-05

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…...

Romanticization of the ‘West’

Kali Regenvanu

2020-02-05

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...

A new way to communicate

Geraldo Sibinde

2020-02-04

There are thousands of languages out there, some only a few hundred can people speak them, I used to wonder how people used to communicate when they did not have a common language, even sign language is not universal, it varies within countries, certainly you will  comprehend the basics, maybe easier to go around using...

Introducing Assa

Crystal Bach

2020-02-04

Hi, my name is Assa Ndiaye. I am the namesake, or turëndo, of my host papa’s mother, who passed away 6 years ago. I also share this name with one of my older sisters, so as you can imagine this leads to much confusion at times. I was given this name when I met my...

Family Meets Familia: An Ecua-Adventure

Abigail Mann

2020-02-03

This post is ridiculously overdue, but hey, better late than never, right? My two previously very separate worlds collided on December 24, 2019 when my fantastic mom, dad, and brothers all visited me here in Cuenca, Ecuador.  They landed in Guayaquil on the 23rd and took a somewhat long van ride all the way to...