A LONG AWAITED ORPHANAGE VISIT

A new 8 month old friend and his caregiver at the orphanage.

Joseph making new friends at the orphanage ( He's the one with

the passy in his mouth!)

This past Thursday we got to visit the orphanage already established here. It is supported by an organization in So. Korea. The directors are a married couple and they live with their 2 sons at the orphanage. The orphanage is on the third floor of a 5 floor building. (The fifth floor is a skating rink...can't wait to try that out!) I think they use the full floor and there's alot of room. 34 children live there. They have a large kitchen/dining room, several bedrooms (4-6 children to a room), a large library and classroom for studying. They also have a rec. room with a pool table, ping pong table, weights, and a stage with karaoke. I was very impressed and it did not look like we expected it to. The children were studying and getting home from school when we arrived ( it was after 7pm and the high school students were just coming home from school!) The directors were very open with us and are willing to share what they know about Chinese orphanages. The husband, Daniel, expressed a need for fellowship and I hope he and Jim will be able to find time to just "hang out". His wife is Soo Son and she is close to my age. We made arrangements with them to teach Eng. on Tues. and Thurs. evenings. They seemed very appreciative of our volunteering. We are excited to go back....my kids will have fun there and I'm craving to learn the ins and outs of the orphanage world. We had an interpretter with us, but the directors' English was pretty good.....I don't think we will always need a translater when we go there. It is also only a 5 minute walk from our apartment.

We had dinner this evening with many of the volunteers. Cy is here now. It was good to see him again. We ate at the hotel that we stayed at when we first arrived. It was Korean food. I'm really enjoying the "grassy" and "weedy" side dishes. I have no idea what we're eating but because it looks like grass and weeds, I assume I'm eating healthy. Our helper Sunny makes these dishes too and I love it. Emma is starting to complain that we eat too much grass......but I'm not. We also had fried tofu (Jameson loved), duck, sweet and sour pork, kimchi, rice and other vegetable dishes that are too hard to explain. We eat veggies here that I've never heard of...alot of roots I didn't know you could eat!!

We have a busy weekend. Jameson is going to meet a boy who lives here with his extended family but was born in the States....English is his first language so we're excited to get the two boys together. Emma has a play date with a Korean girl from my English class. They live near us and after our spaghetti party, the mother invited Emma over to play at her house...she is only a year younger than Emma. Emma is excited to go. We are going to a Christmas dinner for all the Hope School teachers at the Pizza place we love to go to on Saturday afternoon. We are also meeting with a friend for family pictures.....and of course I teach 2 English classes on Saturday and we have mandatory meetings on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon......is it even possible to fit so much in one weekend.....we'll find out!!