A Christmas Wish Come True

Good morning everyone!

I'm sure all of you are busy baking cookies, shopping, and preparing for Christmas this week. I can't believe it's in four days. I had a fun weekend that turned out much differently than I expected - but in a good way. I've been keeping up with Christmas episodes on TV, playing Christmas music for my classes, and this week I'm teaching all Christmas lessons, so I am definitely feeling the holidays, but my experience on Saturday at the orphanage is what really captured the essence of Christmas. Oh, but first - here's a lovely picture I took when I walked outside the door at school last week - the mountain valley views are forever changing and always beautiful.

If you remember, I mentioned last week that this past Saturday was our Adopt A Child day at the orphanage. One of the volunteers organized the entire Adopt A Child program, which was a huge success. A few weeks ago, he asked the girls to each write down four things they have on their Christmas list, including their name, age, and size. After some translating with the orphanage director, he put out a notice on Facebook and put an announcement in the Gwangju News, calling the foreign community of Gwangju to help make a special Christmas for the girls. He had a tremendous response, and soon had tons of people calling him to volunteer to buy gifts - he personally assigned each person with a gift, took down their contact information, and established two drop off points for people to drop off their purchased and wrapped presents at. Within three or four weeks, he had nearly every present accounted for, and he personally took care of the few remaining. He expected a much smaller amount of people to respond and hoped that the girls would get at least two gifts on their list - but in the end, all the girls got four gifts each, due to the Gwangju community effort.

After our last Korean class (I passed!) and a visit to the bake/book sale orphanage fundraiser that was put on by my book club, my friend and I headed over to the orphanage. There was quite a bit of activity, and we ended up staying the whole afternoon to enjoy the festivities. Some of the girls are placed in a homestay program, similar to foster care, so they were all there with their homestay families to celebrate also. The afternoon started off with lots of performances by both a local band and then by the girls themselves. I was so impressed. There was singing, dancing, and playing of instruments. It was neat to see them having a ton of fun and showing off for their audience. Us volunteers even showed off our skills by singing a rendition of We Wish You A Merry Christmas for the girls. Here is a video of one of my favorite performances: the star of the show was the little cutie in the front, which I'm sure is no surprise to you.

After the performances, there was a big meal provided for the girls and the volunteers by local donators. We socialized and played with the girls, enjoying pizza, fruit, snacks, and salad...that I ate with chopsticks. When in Rome.

After lunch and cleaning up, the homestay families left, and all of us volunteers waited in anticipation for what we knew was coming next. Sure enough, guess who showed up? It was Scottish Santa Steve, otherwise known as just Santa. A big cheer rang out, of course, and there was an extended photo shoot with Santa - the girls were thrilled.

After Santa's arrival, it was time for...presents! I was very impressed at the organization - the presents were all brought in in cardboard boxes, and, with his helpers, Santa called out the names of the girls, who came up one by one to get one present at a time. Instead of ripping them open immediately (which I would have done, I'm sure) they sat and played with their wrapped presents, eagerly waiting to see who would get called next. It was really fun to see the girls that I bought presents for - I got two clothing items for two different girls - smile with excitement as they received my presents. I couldn't help but think how wonderful it was of Al to organize everything - who knows what kind of a Christmas the girls would have had otherwise? It was really inspiring and great to know that so many people had made just a few donations each to bring Christmas to so many girls. I couldn't think of a better way to see Christmas in action, and was so thankful to have the opportunity to see firsthand the joy that was brought to the little girls.

We all had a lot of fun during the present distribution - sharing the excitement with the girls who proudly came over to show off what they had gotten. One of the little tootsies got ahold of my camera and started taking pictures of everyone (note: if you want silly pictures of people, just find a two year old to carry around and take pictures for you - it's also highly entertaining.) We gave her a taste of her own medicine by sneak attacking the camera away from her and taking her picture with me - we made sure to give it back right away though, of course. Clearly she has a bright future in photography - here are Sara and Santa Steve, post Santa costume.

After about three hours at the orphanage, the festivities began to wind down, and we made our exit (after detaching our little photographer from my camera...and my arms.) I couldn't have thought of a better way to spend the afternoon. Since we had eaten at the orphanage and figured we'd better not try for a repeat of last weekend's dining marathon, Sara and I headed back to my place for a while to regroup and run some errands, then we went out to meet some friends later.

I had planned to spend all day Sunday finishing up my Christmas gifts, decorating cookies, and getting a head start on my lesson planning for next week. However, due to staying out late Sara stayed over at my place, so instead of my planned early wake up, I ended up sleeping in (I kept having to reassure myself it was okay and I'd still have the day to work.) However, after a relaxing cup of coffee at my favorite neighborhood coffee shop - Kenya Espresso - we made the spontaneous decision to throw out any plans of productivity and instead spend our afternoon at the...movie theater. Harry Potter 7 had made its release in Korea on Friday, and we heard from some friends that it was worth seeing. I hadn't seen a movie in months, and had never seen one in a foreign country, so I considered it a new and necessary experience. After stumbling around a bit trying to figure out how to buy a ticket, we purchased them (with the help of some Korean guys who could see our obvious fail to understand how to buy them) and only later did we realize we actually bought tickets for the IMAX viewing instead of the regular screen - better than the other way around, I suppose. After a very authentic Korean lunch (aka - mouth on fire spiciness that left us both slightly warmer and in a lot of pain...so good though) we purchased popcorn and pop to complete the experience, then headed inside.

Note to self: IMAX is probably a better idea when you're not in the front row...however, those were the only seats that were left. (When we purchased our tickets at the machine we had to select our seat numbers on the touch screen.) After attempting to adjust our heads and necks (I felt like I was almost laying horizontally) we settled back and zoned out to enjoy two and a half hours of Harry Potter. I thought the movie was really well done, and am definitely anticipating the final movie next summer. It was also nice to just relax and focus completely on a movie. My head was still spinning when we left the theater due to the proximity of the screen, but as I walked out I was struck with the odd reminder that I was still in South Korea - the day had seemed so typical of a weekend at home that I had nearly forgotten I wasn't at the River Hills Mall or BayPark Cinema (Mankato or Green Bay.)

I realized that even though I was so far away from home there were still experiences that seemed completely normal to me. Friends going out for coffee, families going to an afternoon movie, watching a movie in English in the theater (though you'd have to ignore the Korean subtitles...) The sense of familiarity was comforting, especially as Christmas draws closer and closer. I have to say though, the best and most comforting feeling was manifested at the orphanage this past Saturday, when the joy of giving was so obviously shared by all who donated gifts, and the happiness of watching the girls' faces was contagious. The effort of the community that pulled together to make Christmas happen for these girls was incredible, and I was so happy to be a part of it. As you make your final rounds at the mall (especially on Christmas Eve) this week, and then hopefully get to watch your family and friends open your presents, I hope you experience the same feeling of happiness that I felt this weekend. Making those girls' Christmas wishes come true was the best present I could have ever gotten.

I wish you all and your families a very Merry Christmas! Stay warm and safe on the roads, all you brave winter weatherers!