The Trip of a Lifetime by Hannah

The Trip of a Lifetime by Hannah - January 2017 Scholarship Essay

When I signed up for the trip to the Ecuadorian Rain forest, my main motive was to see a region of South America and absorb its culture and activities. However, I learned much more than that. Have you ever thought about how great we have it? Here, living in the United States? I remember being an oblivious child, told constantly to be grateful for what I had. Back then, I never thought about how fortunate I was to be living here- I never knew how lucky I was until I saw the other side of the world. Experiencing both the beautiful and horrid sights of Ecuador taught me more than I could’ve ever expected.
Despite the Hispanics struggle to understand my accent, I exchanged thoughts with these natives because they seemed like my friends rather than strangers. I got the opportunity to play the children in soccer, and even though they beat us seven to two, my heart was warm and filled with nothing but pure glee. As we stood upon their rugged form of a soccer field - cement pavement with a tin roof - I watched all the genuine smiles appear on their little faces. They taught me the quality or quantity of sources such as technology, furniture or plentiful clothing aren’t important. These children, varying from the ages two to seventeen, discovered what was enough for them to live a worthy life: friends and family. Each and every child valued their siblings and parents. The families stuck together no matter where they went.
In America, many of us are too distracted by the technology, entertainment, and responsibilities to enjoy the beauty and our loved ones around us. Here, it seemed as if all the communities had were each other. Whether they had a nice home or a rugged one, or clean clothes or dirty ones, a big or small family. Some valued different things, however, the common love for friends and family remained. Not having any freshwater or other important resources is the root of why families are tightly bonded in this country. Without resources families depend on each other in order to live a decent life. A man told us his story of how he traveled a mile down the woods to find a natural spring of freshwater and expressed that if he would’ve found it earlier, his thirteen year old daughter wouldn’t have died. The inability to find clean water is something that we would never go through in America. We have drinking fountains, bottled refreshments, and trustworthy sinks that provide us with everything we need. Even the hint of a cold can be fixed urgently in a hospital or with a prescribed dosage of medication. The fact that this man couldn’t save his daughter’s life because he couldn’t hydrate her was a troublesome lifestyle for me to grasp. I had it easy, and I was in the presence of hardship.
After this man shared his story, I could not erase it from my mind. The teachers and students I had been traveling with conversed with me about giving back to Ecuador from home. We made to a conclusion that we would sell handcrafted jewelry in our school around the holidays, and send all of the proceeds back to Ecuador. The stories and relationships I had made with these people opened my eyes to help. The skinny old man who had lost his daughter gave me the understanding of life here, which urge my motivation to help even more. They were kind, compassionate, hardworking people who deserved more than what they had. The United States has more than enough for families to survive, but in Ecuador, family members are dying from lack of reliable resources. I wanted to make a bigger difference in their lives than they made in mine; I know I will be once they see I am reaching out.