I believe that while traveling to a foreign country gives you many unique experiences and memories, it is just as important to give back to the community that provided you with these opportunities. This past weekend, I had the honor of volunteering at Korea’s Red Cross Organization. We assisted in baking and packaging multigrain breads and chocolate muffins for underprivileged children in the area. The overall experience was not only extremely enjoyable but also rewarding.
I will be honest – going into the experience, I was not looking forward to waking up at 8am on a Saturday morning to catch the bus at 8:30. I even thought about not showing up after I snoozed my alarm a few times. However, I’m very glad I went. We arrived at the Red Cross Center at around 9:30am and got right to work after checking in. The kind ladies who helped us at the Red Cross spoke only in Korean but I somehow managed to understand every word that they were trying to convey to us, maybe it was how animated they were when explaining directions to us. They were super nice and had such a positive attitude and energy when they spoke to us.
When we first walked into the kitchen, I was hit with the overwhelmingly comforting smell of rising bread. As someone who went through a very strong baking phase at the beginning of Covid and whose family enjoys making our own bread with our bread machine, the smell of yeast and bread was all too familiar. I was then filled with a sense of relief realizing that we would not have to bake everything from scratch for 3 hours. While I love cooking and baking, the thought of mixing and kneading dough for 3 hours was already making my arms sore on the bus ride there. We were instructed to stand 4 people to a table, 2 people cutting and weighing each chunk of dough to 70kgs and the other 2 people were tasked with rolling and shaping the dough into spheres. As each tray was put into the oven one at a time, the smell of baked bread got stronger and stronger, engulfing the room with a reassuring, familiar smell of home even though I was on the other side of the world.
After baking all of the breads and muffins, we also helped clean up the kitchen by doing the dishes, and putting all the equipment away. We then spent the next hour to an hour and a half packaging everything in order to prepare them for their delivery to families nearby. At the very end of our shift, we sprayed down the kitchen with a hose and wiped everything down to prepare for the next group of people who would be volunteering.
Overall, my experience giving back to the community that has already given me so much in just 2 weeks was beyond pleasant. I had a wonderful time meeting new people and getting to know familiar faces even more. It was truly a great bonding experience as well as a wonderful way to give back to the community here in Seoul.
