May 10th Orphanage Visit

This trip started out just like all the others... we all gathered at the main gate and took taxis to the orphanage where we waited about an hour for the the children to return from church. As soon as they got back that all had some little ice cream and changed clothes before heading off to the park. The two oldest girls elected to stay behind but the rest of the kids went with us. The 'twins' enjoyed walking Capt Fitzgerald's dog, Jackson all the way to the park. After we arrived, all the boys ran down to the soccer field and started to kick the ball around. Lambert opted to be the goalie for pretty much the entire time, while the rest of us played offense. During this time all the girls that came spent the time playing with the dog.For the first couple of visits there was a schnauzer at the house but for the past few months he has been absent. I didn't want to ask if he died and upset the children or if they couldn't take care of him/afford to keep him and had to get rid of him. I think that is way they loved playing with Jackson, though. After about 40 minutes, 2 of us went to the corner store and got everyone water and mai-chew, which the kids all shared. Once the children got tired of playing, we brought them back to the orphanage and headed back to base.

New Addition

When we arrived at the orphanage we noticed some blankets on the floor and upon closer inspection saw that there was a baby wrapped up in them! He was so quiet and hardly moved... some of us thought that he was one of those life like dolls. He is 10 months old in Korean Age so he is barely a month old. His name is Park Samwol.

March 22 Visit

This trip started out just like all the others did.... waiting for the children to come back from church. It seemed to take a little longer than usual. 10 of us went and luckily 2 people had cars so we drove there which made it a lot easier than calling taxis. Someone had dropped off a box of snacks and school supplies to the kids so first thing they did when they got back was chow down on the treats^^ Before we left, we gave the kids some of the stuffed animals and snacks that some of the volunteers had brought for them. They loved everything; especially their mom. After the kids were ready to go we made our way to the park. We did have one casuality on the way... Daniel was running, tripped over a curb, and went face first into the cement. Good thing he is a young, resilient kid cause he just jumped up and continued running instead of crying. He did get a HUGE lump on his head though. It looks nasty! At the park some of the kids started playing soccer and others threw a frisbee around for a bit. After a while, the kids' teachers came and joined us for a bit. I thought that the one was a classmate of some of the girls. She just looked soooo young. At around 330 the teachers started dragging the kids back to their house so that they could begin studying. I feel really bad that they had to go study especially after all the candy and running around that they did.

We had cancelled the January sledding trip due to the large amount of snow that fell that weekend. Although the conditions would have been great to sled in, the road conditions were not that great for traveling on and I didn't want to risk anybody getting in to an accident. I moved the trip to February 15th. We were bringing the children on base to make pizza and cupcakes and maybe watch a movie. I went to the commissary that morning to get all the ingredients needed and then met Moore to go pick up the children. When we arrived at the orphanage they were not back from church yet so we waited a little bit for them. There were a couple of adults at the orphanage that we had not seen before.... so they started asking us the usual questions. It was pretty good level 1 OPI speaking practice hahaha. The children arrived about 10 minutes later and started changing and getting ready to head out with us. This time all 10 kids were coming with us. We took taxis to base and gathered in fron of the main gate. Last time we brought the children on base we had to give our ID's and all their 'social security numbers' but this time we told them they are all under 14 (which they are) and they let us right through. It made things a little easier for us^^ Our first stop was to go to my room and pick up all the stuff for the pizzas and cupcakes. Then we went to building 1348's first floor dayroom to start cooking. We were about an hour late but thankfully all of the volunteers were there waiting for us. We immediately started chopping up the vegetables and opening up the pizza doughs. The children found the Pam fascinating and they all wanted to spray the pans. And it startled a few of the children when they opened the containers because of how they pop hahahaha. It took a while to get all the doughs flattened out and covering the pans because they rolled the dough up into balls instead of just rolling them out. After that we added the sauce, cheese and vegetables. We put as many pizzas as we could in the oven in the dayroom and took some upstairs to the 3rd floor over (who knew??). Once the pizzas were cooking we started on the cupcakes. Funny story about that.... some of the kids were asking why we had brought 2 big tubes of mayonaise.... -_-;; So we had to explain that it was icing and it was supposed to go on top of the cupcakes after they were done cooking. While the pizzas were cooking and a few of the kids helped make the cupcakse, the remaining kids were doing their usual 'pick me up and run me around until you passout.' All of the pizzas came out surprisingly well and the cupcakes were pretty good too. We put on Beauty and the Beast in Korean, after trying to figure out a way to get Korean movies to play on different region DVD players and not having a remote for the DVD player anyway so finally settingly for a playstation.... it was a bigger ordeal than it needed to be. But that movie worked out just fine. After all the pizzas were eaten and the cupcakes were decorated it was time for them to go home. This time we had Angehr help us take them all back. On the way back we had a couple casualties, though.... May those cupcakes forever rest in piece hahahaha :) After we dropped them off we got another taxi and headed back to base.... but the taxi driver was such a talker!!!! Holy mackeral hahaha.... Oh well it was more good speaking practice^^

Dec 28th Orphanage Visit

Santa decided to make a special trip this year and go to the House of True Love Orphanage. He, along with 2 of his faithful elves, loaded up his car (because his sleight got confiscated at customs in addition to his reindeer) and made his way to the children's home. These children were loved so much that Santa had to make 2 trips to bring all of the presents that they got. After the second trip, Santa had to get into his suit and wait for the children to come back from church. However, they arrived a little sooner than expected...and saw Santa puttingon his suit on the cameras that were watching the room!!! (That was actually very funny and something that I didn't even think about) We had to hold the children off for awhile while Santa finished getting dressed and setting up all the presents. After everything was all set up, we let the kids into the room. It was awesome to see all of their faces light up when they saw all the presents that they had gotten. The first thing that the kids said was 'Santa has lost weight.' That was probably one of the funniest things that happened. They also kept saying 'That's not the real Santa.' Hahaha.... The oldest children helped hand out the presents so that they could sit with it while on Santa's lap. The 2 oldest children couldn't even sit on Santa so they just stood next to him hahaha. I felt so bad because I forgot to address any of the presents to one of the boys... so I had to hurry and fix some name tags for him. (I cannot put in words how awful I felt. We had enough presents; I just didn't label any for him) Luckily, everything turned out alright. I completely forgot what it's like to be a kid during Christmas and hurridly open all the presents and then play with everything you got. After giving all the presents out we spent a good 30 minutes cleaning up all the wrapping paper and then another 2 hours playing with the children. Right after the presents were given out Santa had to go back to the North Pole but luckily Capt Gruters arrived moments after he left to fill in for him. It was hilarious how all the children kept saying 'You're Santa.' or 'You sound/look like Santa.' or they would just call him Santa. The best part was how they told Capt Gruters that the ring he had on was the same exact one Santa had been wearing. (Even though Santa only took his gloves off for a minute at the most) For the most part the children were very well behaved and shared everything that they got with each other. We had one little girl, though, that suddenly acquired 'wangjupyung' or 'princess disease.' In other words, she got a little bossy and picky. She wouldn't let Capt Gruters put her down or stop playing with her. When I told the children that it was time to leave she walked by me and said 'No he can't leave.' Hahahahahaha..... I actually think that this was one of the best trips because along with making the children happy we brought them stuff that they really could use to help lower costs for a while. They got lots of new clothes, shoes, jackets, shampoo, soap, some candy, and lots of toys. We gave the lady that runs the orphanage a new microwave and told her that we will be delivering a dryer. I want to thank everyone who helped bring them so much happiness this holiday season. Happy Holidays Everyone!!!!!

Dec 15 Cookie Bake

We decided to once again bring the children on base. Since all the children are under 14 they could come on even though they didn't have ID cards. Moore, Ritchey, Hyden and I took a taxi to the orphanage to pick the children up. Luckily, they arrived only 10 minutes after we arrived as opposed to the hour late they usually come. After they were all ready, we piled them into taxis and took them to base. Immediately after entering the dayroom they went crazy playing with the ping-pong table, pool table, fooze ball table, and messing around with the tv. While Ritchey and Hyden watched the children, Moore and I ran to get all of the cookie doughs and baking supplies that we needed. The day before I had made 3 chocolate chip cookie doughs and 3 sugar cookie doughs. We also had the ingredients needed for 'Snowman Surprise' cookies and gingerbreadmen to decorate. For some odd reason the kids used the cookie cutters while making the chocolate chip cookies.... They filled the whole cookie cutter up so that the cookies were over an inch thick. They took a little longer to cook but they seemed to come out alright. I accidentally burnt one batch, though. I was only going to leave the cookies in for about 5 more minutes but over 10 minutes later I ran to the oven and took the burnt cookies out. They were hard as rock hahaha. After all the chocolate chip cookies were done we had the children make gingerbreadmen. Some of them looked really cool. While we were making and decorating these cookies I put on some k-pop music. They absolutely loved Super Junior T's Rokkugu and Big Bang's Final Farewell. They were singing and dancing along like crazy. I definitely think the next time we take them from the orphanage we will go to a karoake room. I'm sure that they would love that. So after all those cookies were made 3 of the children helped to make the'Snowball Surprise' cookies while the rest of the kids watched 'My Young Bride.' A lot of the non-korean speaking volunteers who had never seen that movie before also sat and watched the entire thing. One of the boys grabbed the tray that was full of the cookies ready for the oven and as he was coming towards the oven he tripped and dumped the whole tray on the floor. We did the old '30 rule' and hurridly picked them up off the floor as all the kids started yelling at him. It was alright to still cook them though because all the germs were most likely cooked out of them. (We weren't really going to eat that batch anyway since the one girl totally sneezed in the dough.... but ssshhhhhh.... that's a secret) It was getting close to dinner by that time so we bought a few pizzas for all of us to share. Along with the karoake room I think it would be cool if we made pizzas with the children. They seemed really interested in doing that. The pizzas arrived and everybody ate a couple of slices. After eating, the eldest girl started beating up on the guys; especially Zack. (Although that might be because I was telling her in Korean that he was a liar, ugly, old, and that she should just hit him ;) ) It was getting late so we decided to take all the children home. We had a little trouble at the main gate because they didn't realize that the other guards had taken our ID's. First thing after they got home they started telling their mom about all the things that got to do. We let them take all the cookies, left over pizza, and gingerbreadmen home with them to share with the other people who live there. I am extremely happy at how smoothly everything went and at how much fun all the kids seemed to have.