Dec 25, 2020
Christmas day arrived and Olivia was up early looking for her Christmas gift from Santa. Lucky for me she had asked for a couple of new games for her Nintendo Switch so I was able to simply buy and download them directly to her Switch. Shhhh… don’t tell her. Olivia was very impressed with Santa’s efficiency. Olivia did not have too much time to play with her new games because later that morning the kids from the orphanage started to arrive. We had some concern over being around so many other people but we figured that the risk was minimized since all the people that were coming were basically one household since they lived together.
There were about 35 kids plus 10 adult volunteers showed up and immediately the place was full of kids and people running around. All the kids understood at least some English so Olivia was able to play with them but most of them were older. There were a few younger that Olivia enjoyed playing with. The highlight for Oliva was when I set up her Nintendo Switch to the TV on the patio and Olivia was showing the other kids her games. Olivia loves being the center of attention and she had fifteen kids gathered around the TV watching as Olivia showed the other kids how to play the game.
After that everyone had lunch together and during the lunch we did very short presentation on the history and meaning of Chinese Red Envelopes before handing one out to each kid. It wasn’t a large amount of money, maybe enough to buy four ice creams but the kids seemed very appreciative. We spent the day just hanging out with the kids and chatting with the volunteers who had come from all over the world.
This wasn’t the Christmas we had planned or hoped for but still spending Christmas on a tropical beach with a bunch of kids is all right and hopefully we were able to add a little bit extra joy to the orphaned kids.