shelbyw

The following post was written by Gap Year Fellow Shelby Watson.

During the two-week Global Gap Year Summer Institute I don’t remember any former gappers talking about bad days. Of course they told us funny anecdotes about falling off motorcycles or running lost through city streets, but not one person shared less-entertaining stories of hard times – like not fitting in, sleepless nights, and lonely dinners and weekends. During my time in South Africa I often wondered why this was. Why would they have not warned me?

I tried very hard to go into my gap year without extravagant or adventurous expectations, but I soon realized that I was still not prepared for the struggles. Maybe you can’t really prepare. But I do want to talk about them, just in case there is a future gapper out there like me.

Now that the first half of my gap year is […]

The following post was written by Gap Year Fellow Shelby Watson.

“What’s your name?”
“Who’s that?”
“Can I play with your hair?”
“Will you chase me?”
“Can you push me on the swing?”

As I walked through the gate of the Dream Centre on the first day of my internship in South Africa, these were the words and actions that poured out of the 90 children who surrounded me. I was pulled in every direction and hugged all over. Four or five kids at the same time would yell, “Shelby watch me do this,” and then show off their best dance moves or their skills on the monkey bars. There was no possible way for me to watch each kid do his or her performance individually. Therefore, I tried to watch each kid for a few seconds at a time, but they soon caught onto what I was doing – and trust […]