Santa's Visit to the Christmas Party

Here are the pictures from the party when the children received all their Christmas gifts and stockings. We tried to get one photo of each kid... Some were missing from the party that day so their gifts went back home to them on the bus. Other kids were too quick grabbing their gifts from our Santas that we didn't manage a snapshot of them. My next post will include photos from the lunch we hosted for them and the performances the children put on for us. Keep an eye out...

Round 3 - the gym

After the flight simulator, the youngest group moved on to the base gym, where they had access to soccer, basketball, and simply a gym floor for running off all kinds of energy. Some kids even got down on the floor and took mini-naps. It made you wonder if they were plagued by narcilepsy. After a few minutes they would jump back up and go at it again. The littlest children were amazing - they must be made of rubber. If one fell down playing soccer, he/she would bounce right back up in one beat and keep on going. I've never seen anything like it. Even the youngest one, the 3 year old, couldn't be stopped by a tiny fall. Enjoy the whopping 2 photos I took... I'm waiting to get some more from others who were there that day. I'd especially like to have pictures from the other 2 groups of kids.

Flight Simulator

The next stop in the party bus was at the flight simulator. You can't take pictures in here of the simulator area, but it was fine taking some photos of the kids wearing simulator flight helmets standing in front of an empty wall.

Below are a couple of the kids on the bus between the flight line and the simulator.








Here are the few photos I took from stop #2 in the simulator.

Orphanage Christmas Party

Here it is.... After a long lull in our blogging chain, we finally have a new post to share! Last Saturday was the Gunsan Children's Home/Panton Christmas Party. It was, thank goodness, a megahit and there are no longer piles and piles of gifts lying strewn all over the chosen dorm room. Those gifts are now in the hands of 75 very happy children. I hope this will be a Christmas they remember for the rest of their lives. Enjoy the pictures... :)

Below is our first group wrapping night. As you can see, we took over one of the dorm rooms so we could have as much freedom as possible being messy and somehow organized all at the same time. This is only one of the 3 rooms in the "apartment" covered in gifts. So multiply this times 3 to get the bigger picture.



Just another shot of all the madness...



Here's Andy working hard to wrap gifts for the orphans. :) We stayed up til 1 the night before making sure everything was as perfect as possible.



Andy and Majik very focused on the task at hand...



All these guys in their Friday shirts (I call them Panton Spirit Shirts) in a mad frenzy to finish wrapping gifts.



And the final product... a huge stack of wrapped presents. They go all the way under the bar in the background. 75 presents plus 20 teachers' gifts. Wow.



Coolio doing a FOD check under the bus. Andy's on the other side doing the same thing. A FOD check is when you check for rocks and other debris before going out on the flight line or crossing a runway. It's potentially disastrous for the jets if there's random debris everywhere.



We split the kids into 3 groups and rotated them around 3 stations: the flight line to see a jet, the flight simulator, and the gym for some indoor soccer. Here is our first stop with the youngest group to see one of the jets. Andy's opening up the cockpit.



This is the youngest orphan at the home we visit. He's 3 years old in American years (4 in Korean years) and absolutely precious. All the kids know how to "push it up" (that's the Panton hand sign) - even little Seung-min. Here he is standing under the jet.



Now Andy's climbing up into the jet so the kids can take turns looking around the cockpit.



The first one to brave the ladder up the side of the jet...



Pushing it up! Don't you love the hat? All the children around here have one of those. There are all kinds of different animals to sit on your head and keep your ears warm.



Looking outside the hangar...



Coolio was the quasi-Elf and Andy the Santa Claus. Instead of a sleigh, they had a jet. I laughed out loud every time Coolio helped a kid back down the ladder - it reminded me of A Christmas Story.



Andy's explaining how the different parts of the jet operate. I'm not sure how much they actually understood, but they enjoyed being that close to an airplane (pihaengi in Korean).



Crowding the ladder. :)




Group photo in front of the jet before we head off to the flight sim. I'll recap that part of the day in a new blog so this one doesn't become a mile long. :)