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About Alexis Dumain

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So far Alexis Dumain has created 3 entries.

My New Lingua Franca

The following post was written by Global Gap Year Fellow Alexis Dumain.

Horses are some of, if not the most, illogical and insecure animals on this planet; however, the month I spent interning at a B&B/natural horsemanship stable and learning how to speak their language taught me more about compassion and deeply-rooted confidence than any other being I’ve come across.

Some things I learned:

Shoveling poop is meditative, especially when it’s so early that your brain cells aren’t yet fully firing.
Flinging said shoveled poop over the fence line is cathartic and makes me feel like some badass jungle warrior.
Sometimes said flung shoveled poop hits a tree and then blows back to you in the wind like some sort of karmic penance.
Falling over with a wheelbarrow full of said shoveled poop because, in your haste to dispose of said shoveled poop, you tripped on a rock is a humbling […]

By |January 2nd, 2019|Gappers in the Field|
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Spring Cleaning

The following post was written by Global Gap Year Fellow Alexis Dumain.

“Three little birds…”

These lyrics to the classic Bob Marley song have soothed me to sleep amidst every malaise from fever to insomnia throughout my childhood, as intoned by my dutiful father. Now, as piped through the speakers of this cafe, they present as more surreal, yet more relevant.

“Sittin’ by my doorstep.”

In North Carolina, it was easy to relate to the simplistic poetry. The harmonics of birdsong was a given, and the metronomic rhythm of life which governed the surrounding symphonic and physical movements was predictable.

In Lima, I’ve found that this is not the case. An abbreviated list of aggravations that I did not anticipate:

1. The weather. I knew in the abstract that Lima is in the Southern hemisphere and therefore, it would be winter. I had even added a page in my weather app and was consoled into […]

By |September 25th, 2018|Gappers in the Field|
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Pre-Departure: A Love Letter to Sheila

The following post was written by Global Gap Year Fellow Alexis Dumain.

As I spend my days (which now bear the weighty significance of the Last Days) in a place I would have once designated as ‘familiar’, I realize how self-contradictory and superfluous taking this gap year is. At first, the lure of a gap year centered on the ever-elusive Fresh Start; I vehemently insisted that I needed to create geographical distance in order to satiate my Sisyphean wanderlust and foster psychological distance from my past self. But what I’m now beginning to understand on a level that transcends articulation is that the essence of where I am has shaped me beyond measure, even when I was too naive to realize it. The paradox is that the closer I inch towards my leap off of this imminent precipice, the more I realize that I don’t actually ‘need’ it, as least […]

By |August 17th, 2018|Pre-departure|
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