visiting an orphanage
For some sort of community service.
All the children there spoke Mandarin (I am not a local and I do not know how to speak one). When we came, the mood felt grim. As we sat down on the floor, the lady in charge had to forcefully bring the children to us. Her tone was harsh though she can be nice (that is when she talks to us). In that instant, I wasn't sure coming to this place at all, we were after all visitors out of nowhere who came here for community service. Suddenly cameras are shoved right onto their face, some dejected to which I suggested my friend to calm down with it. Eventually they just got comfortable with it I guess.
The next few hours, we played origami with the kids, and by the power of facial expression, a ya and a no, and an active participation to the activity, I think I handled the barrier just fine.
As it turned out, the children were far better at origami than us. One kid whom I approached and lend him an origami in fear of him missing out since he was seated away from everyone else turned out to be proficient at it. I was fooled (technically I had a feeling he would surprise me so was I really fooled?).
The children have probably been visited multiple times already by students from our university and by other people. The hope of the visit was to brighten their day but I can't help but suspect or be skeptical. Does playing origami with random freshman students produce an impact on them? Perhaps my expectation is set too high but I don't know, I am not here to reproach community services either.
My feeling was the visit felt like to many of us a chore, a thing needed to be done, so it didn't feel as sincere as I really hoped it to be. Surely I can't speak for everyone but when the most recent thing you post in the groupchat after the event are pictures of ourselves and not with the children, I'm not sure if it gave any values to us except the resume. To me it feels so meaningless, if a sincere act can't produce a great impact at least make it a worthwhile moment. Not from what you are doing but what it can give to you. But if it did made their day, I hoped it really did.