Getting out of the city...

On Saturday I went with some friends to an orphanage about 1 1/2 hours south of Seoul.  In Korea, there are several orphanages, and the children are there for numerous reasons.  Many of the children at the orphanage that we visited have parents or grandparents that visit them on the weekends, but are not able to support them living at home.  Some, though, do not have family, and I just feel so badly for them.  The grounds are nice, and there seems to be a lot of support at the school, but having a caring family makes such a big difference.
The orphanage that we visited has about 100 kids I think, but we only really met about 20 or 30 of them.   The kids we met ranged in age from 3ish to about 13.  We pretty much just hung out and played with them all day.  They only speak a very limited amount of English, so it was a bit difficult trying to communicate with them.  There was a little boy who was the youngest one we saw, and he would get so mad when he tried to explain something and we couldn't understand him!  Tough little guy!  We had a really great time, and I am so excited to go back.  The group has an outing about once a month, and right now we are planning on getting something together for Christmas so that hopefully we can give them presents.  Anyhow - look for updates as I get to know the kids better in the coming months.  Here are a few pictures - my camera ran out of batteries, so I didn't get to take many pictures.  :(

This is a picture of one of the building at the orphanage

These are two of the girls that I got to know during the day

Brandon is teaching this kid a little bit of English 

Mariko and me at the beginning of the day.

You can see the orphanage's playground behind us.

This was the whole group of volunteers - great group of people!

It was actually organized by the guy in the green, Danny, on Facebook.