As of this moment, it is before my first volunteering with the Eastern Social Welfare Center, where I will be spending an hour of my time with babies in their facility. I have never done volunteering with young babies before, so I predict that this will be an impact and emotional experience. Even when I had a short introduction and training session at the location, the emotions already started to dwindle inside. Being there is quite eerie, especially because it was at that exact location a friend of mine was adopted from, and when I laid my eyes on the children, I just imagined her in that exact position.
It is now after my one hour volunteering, and it was one of the heart-warming experiences ever. I held a little baby boy named Danwoo (단우), and he was just a sweet little monkey. As a held him, I couldn’t help but think about his parents and where they were and what brought them to the decision to leave this boy probably a month or two ago. All I could give this boy was some love and words of encouragement, even if he didn’t understand them. I look forward to continuing this and meet more and more babies.