Gracelyn Klettner

A little more on Ecuador...

 

While everyone else was off playing soccer I stayed in the classroom to take more pictures of the children when I happened upon two of the sweetest moments. This is the reason that I have two different pictures for my photo essay. The first moment was the distribution of the school supplies. It amazed me how not only genuinely excited the kids were, while at the same time they didn’t know what a pencil eraser top was. The children just came to light when the supplies were doled out. At one point I felt guilty. I was guilty and shameful that I come from a culture where an iPhone is handed to a whiney child because it’s easy. It’s not that I am not guilty of this, I find myself doing it all the time but to see how genuinely happy these kids were. 

  

 The second situation was just after the supplies were given out. The little boy that was a part of the Greffa family was sitting playing with his new supplies, when I went over and sat down next to him. I took down the class globe and was explaining in by best broken Spanish where I was from. Rachel and I taught him how to do a peace sign. It was really cool for me to actually be able to communicate with this little boy who I had met last year and had such a hard understanding. In that short amount of time we visited the jungle to study their culture they had in a sense accepted us into it. It gave me hopes that one day I could stay for longer and understand their culture to the fullest extent. This moment for me was also window into how important learning another language will be if I want to be any kind of anthropologist.