Korean Orphanage

Yesterday I went to a Korean orphanage. I had no expectations going in, which is a good thing.

We were only there for about 2 hours and mainly provided activities and our love and friendship for that time. In Korea, the orphanages are state run and well provided for (from my understanding). Please don't count me an expert on Korean orphanages because I only have this two hour experience to draw from. This particular orphanage had children from age 5-18 and it was very clean. They had a nice library, a piano, a kitchen and cafeteria. There were a couple of dogs chained up next to the playground and a cat running around.

Our group of about 20 (15 foreigners and 5 Koreans) were split into five different groups soccer, badminton, cooking, drawing and Word/Picture matching. No one is too keen on the word/picture matching so I decided to go over to that section. The kids already knew all of the words on the cards (mouse, cat, dog, boy, girl, sky, etc) and what can you really do with flashcards? So after one round of shouting out "what is it?" we moved onto find who has the pair and then I had had enough of the cards. So... I taught them egg, chicken, dinosaur (extreme rock paper scissors if you will) and then I taught them "Down by the Banks of the Hanky Panky"... it was a HUGE hit! The person who got hit had to sing or dance and sit in the middle. There was one particular boy who would dance for the others when they were too shy.

All in all it was a good experience. I forget that its the "Korean way" for kids to hit each other (and hard!) so that was a little surprising for myself and Michelle (a girl from British Jersey) when it didn't bother the adult Korean worker that was with us. Meanwhile we kept telling them to play more gently and to not hit each other! But before and after the activities the kids would latch onto your hand and not let go. I had one girl lead me around for about 20 minutes telling me many things in Korean and I just nodded and smiled and said "Molayo" (I don't know) a lot.

My church goes once a week to this orphanage and I will probably join in. I'll definitely need some more games and songs though!

I've also been thrust into being on the worship team as well as leading at my church.


I don't mind...but it is stretching! So... there are many exciting things to come :-)