#oprhanage

[an-american-experiment]

Time. And when my time is up, have I done enough? Will they tell our story? Will they tell your story? Oh. Can I show you what I’m proudest of? The orphanage. I establish the first private orphanage in New York City.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Miranda said, “If this were a work of fiction, any screenwriting teacher would say, ‘take it out, it’s too on the nose.’ But Eliza’s true legacy is in the futures of those children. She was the director of this orphanage for 27 years. The orphanage still exists in the form of the Graham Windham organization.” He has a point - this is almost too perfect to be true, but it is. 

Eliza had always had a fondness for children, but after Hamilton’s death this blossomed into more than just their own children and an occasional friend’s child. Her brother Philip’s wife died, leaving two young boys. Eliza took care of the children for her brother. 

Eliza involved herself in the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows, which was based at Trinity Church. Two women, Sarah Hoffman and Isabella Graham, found five children crying over their dead mother in a tenement building. Graham had recently read about the Germany “ragged school” orphanage model. The two women went to Eliza with their idea of building a home for orphaned children. She accepted. 

The orphanage became a focus for her. Together with a group of other women, she planned projects, signed a lease on a two-story house in which to house the children, and hired two people - a man and his wife - to care for the children. It was on March 15, 1806, that the Orphan Asylum Society was founded. 

Sources: the following sources were used - the collected letters/writings of Alexander Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton the Revolution, Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton, The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton by Allan McLane Hamilton, Hamilton by Richard Syllia, and Charles Cerami’s book called Young Patriots. In addition, War of Two by John Sedgwick and Washington and Hamilton by Tony Williams were used throughout. Tilar J. Mazzeo’s Eliza Hamilton was also used. 

Follow us at @an-american-experiment where we are historically analyzing the lyrics of Hamilton with a new post every day!

[emanuelecerri]

Non sono mai stato felice in quegli anni in orfanotrofio. Avevo solo 2 anni, ma quello che ho provato è indimenticabile. Il mondo intorno a me si era sbriciolato. Ogni mattina il mondo è un foglio di carta bianco e attende che i bambini, attratti dalla sua luminosità, vengano a impregnarlo dei loro colori. Oggi sono andato a vedere il mio vecchio orfanotrofio è trovato ancora i miei amici, loro sono due bambini meravigliosi stanno cercando affetto qualcuno che li protegge. Questi sono i due bambini che vorrei tanto adottare #oprhanage #children #lom #bulgaria (presso Lom, Montana)

[caminolargo-blog]

In for the long run

Dec 13, we will be heading again to Tijuana Mexico to continue building long term relationships with the children. We believe in empowering the youth worldwide.

[whereisnext-blog]

1 Week

Only one week left in my campaign! Even the smallest donation makes the biggest difference in the life of an underprivileged child!

http://www.indiegogo.com/ews170

[anjo-in-ku-blog]

Shinee Fish Market and Ceramic Orphanage

Third day of the Bridging Cultures Program with GlobaLinks Abroad. It's an amazing program. Well worth not being able to attend the SM Town Concert and missing the SM Art Exhibition. I'm still a little bummed but I'm glad I'm here instead. It's been nothing but amazing.

The morning started with the usual, eating kimbap for breakfast. We headed out for our first activity of the day, going to the Fish Market! Woot! Cat is scared of fish and her only pair of shoe is a flip-flop with no grips, her luggage is being held in the Seoul airport because she didn't pick it up, so she was holding onto be through out the whole fish market. It was an interesting sight. 

After the fish market, we went across the street to the International Market. There were a lot of street food, kpop merchandise and knock offs being sold. It was so hot that I had to buy a fan for myself, it's a great excuse to buy a SHINee fan. Haha! But it was put in great use! My other Luna and Onew fans are still in their plastic. This fan costed a little less than $3 while my others costed $8 each, but that's because they're 'official' SM goods.

Random interjection: I ate mandu from one of the vendors, it was yummy! Quite an experience really. 

With our bellies filled, we hoped back on our bus and headed to the orphanage. They advised us not to bring our cameras because the children can be very rough with their curiosities, so I left it behind, but the memory will always be with me. Here's a full briefing on the experience:

Our bus dropped us off at the side of the street and we climbed up this steep alley/street to get to the building. We went inside, took off our shoes and were introduced to the owner/caretaker of the place. He was really nice and tried to speak english as much as he can. He gave us a long talk about happiness. Just the usual: being satisfied with one self, do not compare yourself to others, find a good partner etc.. He also talked about the 5 H's: Head, Heart, Hands, Health and Human Relationships. Head, think with it instead of our hearts. Heart, have a big heart. Hands, those with pretty hands experience no hardship and those without pretty hands are hard workers, work hard... etc, etc.. basically if you have the 5 H's, you need the 5 H's to be able to work at a place like the orphanage. After a little more lecturing, he went to tell us about the orphanage. They just built a new building next door because the orphanage was growing quite big, he's housing 70 orphans; all who are there for various reason. He listed the many great things that the orphans get: free high school education, free medical assistance, free school for the furthering of their education, government assistance and support for the pregnant girls and more. But one thing they don't receive enough is Love. and He hoped we could show as much as we can to the kids in the short time we were there.

We finally were able to head upstairs to meet the kids. They were all in the second and third floor. I stopped by the second floor, all the toddlers were in there. There were about 6-10 little boys in the first room and the second room were of little girls. By the time I got there though, there were already a lot of the other BCP members who were there, so I headed to the third floor where the 6-10 year olds were. The girl's room had quite a few number of BCP participants there, so I headed into the boys' room. There was 15, minimum, of them in there. They were all really shy and stuck together in a big silly bunch, laughing and pointing at us. We started to chase them around the room and taller members picked them up and spun them around and stuff like that. The kids really like to play high five, where you put your hands up and they jump to hit it... except Cat and I couldn't do that with them because we were too short. And they were really shy and avoided us girls. So after about 10 minutes of chasing around the boys, I headed to the girls' room where it was much calmer.

When I got there, one of the girls' came and sat in front of me. She wanted to play a hand game, but I kept failing at keeping up with her. So after a while they gave up on playing with me, LOL!! I asked one of the girl what her name was and she told me, but I kept mishearing and pronouncing it wrong, so she gave up and left me too. I was sad, haha! I sat around by my self for about 5-10 mins because the girls wanted to play with the BCP members who were not Asian xD

But then Bekkah came in and the girls started playing with her hair, so I headed over and taught them how to braid hair. Poor Bekkah sat there the whole time with us playing with her hair. But it was fun, I'm glad I was able to teach the girls something. After braiding for a bit, they wanted to play the hand game again. Basically, I played with two girls, a really tiny girl and a cute, chubby cheeked girl (not that the tiny one wasn't cute, they were all adorable). Turns out that the game was really simple. It's just a repetitive "clap-left-clap-right-clap-both" gesture. I was actually playing it right the first time, it was the girls who were messing up! Hahah! I didn't feel so bad afterwards! But yeah! I alternated between both girls. Tiny was really good and fast while Chubby Cheeks was a little slow and clumsy, so I kept encouraging Chubby Cheeks and telling her that she was doing well, and then I felt bad for not praising Tiny. It was confusing, I ended up doing a bunch of praising, "Ohhhh charanda, whoaa ballanda" (excuse my I-want-to-punch-you-in-the-face horrible romanization) haha! My korean is so bad, sometimes I'm not even sure of what I'm saying. But apparently my pronunciation is good enough for them to not believe that I was not Korean, because whenever I told the kids I wasn't Korea, they wouldn't believe me. Haha! Same with a lot of the shop keepers and taxi drivers... but maybe they're just being nice xD

But ahh.. it was sad when time to leave came by. I was still playing the hand game with they girls and they were disappointed that we were leaving, but they didn't want to give us hugs! LOL! I had a hard time leaving them though, especially chubby cheeks, because they kept getting better each time we played. I kept extending my leave by playing longer with them. Then finally Chubby Cheeks took my hands and told me that it was time for me to go. But my good bye wasn't that hard, I loved playing with the kids but kept a distance; I didn't want to become super emotional after leaving them. But I did genuinely enjoy my time with them. I felt so bad for one of my friend though, she had a kid who was really attached and he wouldn't let go of her when it was time to go :( it was a heartbreaking scene when they had take they kid away from her, there was more than a few tears that were shed. But the owner told us that they had housing available for those who wanted to volunteer. So Cat and I will be returning to stay for about 2-3 months there during our winter break :)

After that unforgettable activity, we headed off to go do some ceramics. It was.. just ceramics. LOL!! I've done it in middle school and high school, so it wasn't anything special.

The day ended pretty early, we got back to the hotel at around 6:30-7ish. Cat and I came back to the room, she took a long-ass time to get re-ready and we headed out to a nearby restaurant to get some Jajangmyeon. It was pretty good. Haha, we kind of embarrassed ourselves because the waiter asked us a question we didn't know.. and he knew absolutely no English and the menu was in Korean. so after about 5 him pointing to the Menu and asking us something about bap (rice) I finally said, "Jajangmyeon." and he smiled and nodded and came back later with two freshly made bowls of Jajangmyeon. Haha!

We finished our meal and paid, stopped by 7/11 to pick up tomorrows breakfast and settled in for the night.. so Cat's two hour get-up was for nothing. Puahaha!

Tomorrow we are heading to a cooking class and then to Seoul. So I will update you guys with that when the time comes. Next post will be about miscallaneous things that, hopefully, are interesting and fun.

-Anjo

[justthemiddleoftheride-blog]

Romania Part III

So yesterday I talked a little about what I learned about the problems with AIDS/HIV in Romania. All of this was observed at Casa Doru.  A section of a hospital in Bucharest dedicated to the care of children and adolescents with the disease. We spent two days with these kids; we made friendship bracelets, watched music videos, played ping-pong ( meaning us Americans got our butts whipped!), and laughed. I laughed so much with those kids. They were also so eager to learn. A large portion of the two days was spent with us trying to teach other our languages. One girl Nicoletta spoke a little bit of Italian, and so do I, so through our Italian skills I was actually able to learn some Romanian, and in return teach her some English. We were only able to spend two days at Casa Doru, because the wonderful woman who runs the center, Mary Veel, doesn't like groups to stay too long, because these kids, who often have little to no stability in their lives, tend to get attached easily. 

Casa Alexandra was the orphanage we visited for 6 days during the second week. This orphanage houses children ages newborn to 25 dealing with physical and mental disabilities at varying levels. The nurses and staff at Casa Alexandra are all very protective of the children and their privacy so the particular disabilities, or function levels of the individual children is not revealed to us, but in many instances is very apparent. The orphanage was divided into 4 "groups", which each consisted of bedrooms and a common area. The musketeers were the first group; they were all boys ranging greatly in age, and appeared to us to be some of the highest functioning children at the orphanage. Then there was the ladybugs, which was all girls, and again seemed a little more higher functioning, then the butterflies, and finally the dwarfs, which were the most severely disabled group at the orphanage. We went to the orphanage twice a day, in the morning and then in the late afternoon to take one of the groups to the park. Overall at the orphanage was where I faced my most challenging personal fears, and saw and experienced disturbing instances that I am still finding hard to face upon returning. I will go into detail with two more posts. One about Cosmin, the Romanian love of my life :), and the other about our day with the Butterflies and Dwarfs.