Golgul Temple stay and Busan

On the weekend of May 21st I got a 3-day weekend due to Friday being Buddha's birthday. Friday morning I left Seoul to go to the town of Gyeongju where I'm told the best Buddhist temples are. I went there to partake in something called a temple stay. I was there for less than 24 hours but it was interesting nonetheless. We got to Golgulsa (Golgul Temple) late on Friday night, and nothing of note really happened until Saturday. We had to dress up in these vests and pants for the duration of our stay. Not flattering at all. Take a look:

Yeah so I'm still working out on how to move some pictures around on my Macbook and fix them when I am browsing for them. Bear with me. Anyway, this is a famous Buddhist temple built into the rock that is in Golgulsa.

Getting ready for Sunmudo training. Info on it can be found here

Here you can see the actual temple in the daylight. Again, sorry for it not being upright

All my meals consisted of vegetables, kimchi, tofu and rice. The banana was my dessert. I had forgotten to take a picture of my meal BEFORE eating it (this was my last one at the temple), so instead you'll have to settle for my almost-finished last meal at Golgulsa

On Saturday morning I got up at 4am (the time when all the other monks wake up), then went to the Sumudo school (the part of the Buddhist temple where they train their martial art called Sumudo) and we went there to bow and do morning prayers, as well as have some meditation time. Afterwards we had breakfast and I was given the pleasure of taking part in a traditional monk meal. It was very interesting, but definitely not something to be done by the prudish. This event was also filmed because there's some sort of documentary being made, so that was interesting.Everyone is sitting down on the floor with their legs crossed, and then one receives a big bowl with a lid. This bowl has another 3 bowls stacked inside it. On top of the lid there were 2 square pieces of cloth, one gray and one white, as well as a set of wooden chopsticks and a spoon inside a cloth pouch. Everyone is lined up around the room and you have to put your bowl and everything at the tip of your right leg. The bowls have to be all in line with each other. At the "head" of the room sit the top monks.

Once you are allowed to you take the gray piece of cloth, unfold it, and then set it down. The cloth is folded in a way to make 4 squares from the folds. On the lower left hand side goes the big bowl, which is the rice bowl. On the lower right hand side goes the bowl that is the second biggest, which is the soup bowl. At the top left corner goes the smallest bowl of all, the vegetable bowl. And then on the top right hand side goes the second smallest bowl, which is the "clean water" bowl. You put your chopsticks and spoon in this bowl to start off.

All of this is done in silence. You have to be as quiet as possible in everything, and there is no talking allowed.

Once this is done a monk comes to pour clean water into your rice bowl. You swish the water around the rice bowl for a bit, and then you pour that water into your soup bowl, swish it around some more, than you transfer the water into the vegetable bowl, then more swishing, then finally put it in the clean water bowl where your chopsticks and spoon are. This water is meant to stay clean. The importance of that will be explained later.

Then another monk comes to serve you rice. It is important to note that in Buddhist tradition nothing is wasted. You have to eat everything in your bowls. This is also important for later.

Then another monk comes around and serves you soup. A tray with vegetables comes around and you serve yourself vegetables, including kimchi. It is important to take at least one piece of kimchi, even if you don't like it. Once it's time to start eating you take the one piece of kimchi and put it in your soup. You "wash" out the spices in the soup and then put the kimchi piece in your rice bowl to the side to be used for later.

For eating you have to bring your bowl up to your mouth. Once you have food in your mouth you have to put the bowl down and whatever utensil you're using down. You chew in silence. This is meant to just kind of reflect and become aware of everything. In fact, the whole meal is one big exercise in reflection and awareness.

Once everything has been eaten (with the exception of the one piece of kimchi left in the rice bowl) a monk comes to give you more water. This water is meant to do the preliminary cleaning of the bowls. This water is poured into the rice bowl where you use your chopstick and kimchi to clean the bowl of any particles. Once free of food particles you pour the water and kimchi into the soup bowl and do the same process. This is repeated again for the vegetable bowl. However, once you've cleaned the vegetable bowl you eat the kimchi and drink the water. I know this sounds gross, but a monk brought up an excellent point: it's not any different from everything else you've just consumed.

Now here is the importance of the clean water in the last bowl. Once you've cleaned the bowls the first time, this clean water is now used to just rinse. You again start with the rice bowl. This time you use your hands to thoroughly get whatever grease is left. Grease is essentially the only thing allowed in your clean water. Once you do so you pour the water into the soup bowl, do the same thing, rinse your chopsticks and spoon with this water, and then pour the water into the vegetable bowl and finish the process. A monk then comes to collect this water. Now, if you did the cleaning right from the first rinsing there should ONLY be grease in the clean water. However, if one fails to do this properly and there are food particles in the clean water, and this water is then poured into the bucket the monk comes around with to collect the water from everyone, then EVERYONE has to drink this water. It is quite an incentive to do it right the first time. You pour most of the water into the bucket, but the monk had us keep a very small portion of the water in the bowl that we had to then drink. Then we dried the bowls, stacked them all up, folded the cloths, and then put everything back to the way it was in the beginning.

And in case some of you think we ate from bowls previously cleaned in this way, and therefore we've been eating out of not properly cleaned bowl, fear not. We took everything back to the kitchen where the younger monks properly cleaned everything with soap and water. However, the job is not a lot easier and less messy since the bowls are free from food. The entire thing was very cool, and I certainly became a lot more aware of things; even something as mundane as the steam rising from my soup. A female monk mentioned to us that the nice thing about having a meal in this way is that not a single grain of rice is wasted. She lives in Europe and she said she gets very frustrated with Europeans throwing things away instead of controlling their portion sizes. It definitely made me think. Today at lunch and dinner I did not leave a single grain of rice uneaten on my plate.

After this we had some free time. I took a nap and then we were given a brief Sumudo lesson. We stretched out and did some kicking and stuff. Nothing effective by any means, but it was fun. Then came the bowing portion of the trip.

Buddhists bow a lot. And I don't meant curtsies or these gentlemen bows done in movies... I mean full-body bows where you go from the standing position down to being on your knees with your arms on the floor and your head down. And on Saturday there was the tradition of the 108 Bows. Each bow is meant to represent something to be thankful for. We were given a list. Every time I bowed I read the listing to the appropriate number so that in my mind I could say what I was thankful for. Don't worry, we had nice cushions for the floor, but 108 bows are not for the lazy. I saw at least 3 girls either stay in the bowing position, just flat out sit and not bow, or stay in the standing position and skip a bow or two. Seeing this motivated me even more to do all 108 bows. I'm happy to say I did, although my thighs, legs and butt are not entirely happy with me for doing so.

After lunch our group headed to Busan, a city in Korea famous for its beaches. We were unfortunate enough, however, to not be able to partake in some sun, sand and fun; it rained all weekend. And I don't mean light rain. Oh no. It poured. Mother Nature was not on my side. On Saturday night I went out with a bunch of people in my group to a bar where a lot of Westerners go. I really hate these types of places. I despise being around a lot of foreigners, especially Americans. This is mostly because I'm not the type to really party a lot or drink myself to a stupor every weekend. It's not who I am and it's not my scene. But I had nothing else to do so I went to this bar. It got more than annoying when I was playing pool with some people in my group and then some drunk idiots got on the pool table to dance:

The epitome of stupidity

The felt of the pool table was totally destroyed. These morons stayed on the table for quite a while just dancing with some girls. I was so embarrassed because of how poorly this reflected on not only me but on America as a whole. Stuff like this makes me hate going to places full of Westerners.

Sunday morning saw more pouring rain.

Rain on Saturday night. There's the "downtown" area of Busan

The beach on Sunday morning

I don't know if you can see, but there were definitely some people swimming at the beach despite the rain

Here is a slightly better picture. Can you see those dots in the water? That's people

I decided to go to the aquarium.

This is upside down jellyfish

That thing is huge! It's a spider crab

Am I the only one who thinks this looks like the alien crab evil demon spawn that attaches to people's faces from the movie "Alien?" No? Just me? OK

This octopus was shy

Yep. Moray eel. Creepy as hell.

One of those deep-water fish. That little tassel it has for a nose is a lure

Shark. Don't ask me which one, I don't remember

SHARK!

Not a great picture, but meh. You can get a better idea of its size with this picture, I think

OK NOW you can get a better idea of its size. It could eat those children. Easy!

For some reason the aquarium had at the end of the actual aquatic stuff some African animals to bring awareness to African habitats

At the end of everything they had a Hyundai filled with water as a "fish bowl car" of some sort. Very strange.



Afterwards I went across the street to eat at a Chinese bistro. I think the people liked me there. I ordered some fried rice with crab and they just kept giving me more soup and vegetables in special sauce as I tried to finish my rice. They also gave me coffee. I was not charged more.

Then I went to the train station and headed back to Seoul. Back to teaching. Back to the stress.

This past I also had "open class." The parents of my kindergartners came in to watch me teach their children for about an hour. I use the term "teach" very loosely here. I haven't been able to actually teach my kids for over a week now as I've been drilling them to remember things to impress their parents. I have looked forward to this week since now I can go back to doing coursework and actual teaching and learning with my kids, not memorization. My director was happy with the parents' comment, and apparently I made 9 out of 10 parents happy. I was not looking forward to the parents' comments on the weekly reports I send out every weekend to every kindergartner as I thought I would receive a ton of criticism (as other teachers have had happen to them), but to my surprise this morning after reading the reports I got back whatever mention was made the parents seemed very satisfied, even the one who apparently complained the day of the open class. I was very happy.

I'm currently shopping around for destinations for my summer vacation. The front runners are: the Philippines, Taiwain, Hong Kong and Guam. I'll hopefully be getting my tickets within the next couple of weeks. I am VERY excited!

OK, I am going to try my hardest to update this more frequently, but it's been so hard. I've been going through somewhat rough times lately. Add to that my chronic exhaustion from teaching, and I'm afraid this blog falls by the wayside. But hopefully I'll be better about it.

T-minus 12 days until Mexico vs. South Africa in the FIFA World Cup, thereby officially kicking off the tournament for me! I should probably have my Korean supervisor call to get cable TV installed for this...

-AALA

Some advice

So first off, I PROMISE a LOOOOONG entry awaits this weekend about my trip this past weekend. I have the majority of it already typed up, I just need to insert pictures.

I was done with work today (on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I'm done about an hour and a half earlier than the other teachers), but I stayed to do some work. It's May and a LOT of stuff has been taking place this week. All the elementary classes have these placements tests, and the teachers have to not only grade them, but also we also have to write up a separate evaluation grading them on a scale of how good/bad each student is on different levels such as speaking fluency, reading comprehension, and even class presentations, overall attitude in class and homework (as in, how often do they actually do it and how much effort do they put into it). So yeah, I had a fair amount to do. Anyway, during my last class I had to switch my teaching material. I share this class with another teacher (as in the first 45 minutes I teach certain materials and then the next hour and a half this teacher teaches other materials). The placement test they were supposed to take had been blocked for the time I was supposed to teach them, meaning I wasn't going to teach today but rather administer and oversee the test. The other teacher and I both agreed that the test should be administered during her teaching block because she has them for a longer amount of time. Our Korean supervisor agreed, and I was given some of the teaching materials (the phonics portion) of the other teacher to teach during my time block so that the other teacher could use that same amount of time during her block to administer the test. You following me so far?

Anyway, from what I was told these kids have a hard time paying attention, staying focused, constantly fight, etc, especially during the phonics lesson which they all think is very boring. When I was first told this I was surprised because the same kids in general do not misbehave with me. They do something every once in a while (as to be expected), but that's about it. From what I was hearing this was constant for the other teacher. So I was very interested to see how the children would behave with me now that I was teaching material they considered very boring.

The children behaved exactly the same way they always do with me. Focused, staying in their seats, not talking out of turn, etc. They were even trying to one-up each other with answers. At one point there was indeed a lull and I apologized to the kids, telling them I knew the material was boring (I do need to note that the book is terrible, and there are CONSTANT errors). But they unanimously said "No boring, teacher. Carla Teacher is funny," which I'm guessing meant, "We're not bored, teacher. You make it funny." So that warmed my grinch heart.

Speaking of my grinch heart, this is a good time to report something that happened just BEFORE I was about to teach the aforementioned class. My Korean supervisor came up to me to just give me a few notes on what I was going to teach the kids (remember that I wasn't teaching my original materials), and my supervisor said, "Julia [one of the girls in the class] didn't do her phonics homework. Be nice to her, OK?" I was like, "OK... why are you telling me this?" My supervisor told me that Julia would be very upset if I yelled at her for it because she's scared of me. I laughed so hard. Just some background: my kids get a yelling if they don't do their homework. I've also started giving them reward points if they do their homework, and they get more points if it shows they put effort into their homework (this is definitely the least motivated group I teach). This, so far, has actually been paying off. Anyway, I asked my supervisor how the other kids reacted to knowing I was going to be teaching them some of the stuff that is supposed to be from the other teacher. My supervisor said they didn't know. I was obviously confused as to how Julia could comment that she was scared of me if she didn't know I was teaching the material. My supervisor said, "Oh, her mother had called me at one point to tell me that she's afraid of you."

Is it bad that I take joy in knowing my kids fear me? Because I honestly do. It's not the first time a supervisor has told me a kid fears me, and I know it won't be the last. (One such other instance: my friend, Yelena, who is also a teacher at my school, has a girl who is an "attention whore" with an attitude. I came into her classroom once to give her something and Yelena told me after I left this girl said, "I don't like Carla Teacher." When asked why she responds with, "She's scary." Yelena was happy to know her little diva had a fear of someone).

But then something hit me. My kids fear me, but they have fun with me. All of them. From my kindergartners to my 5th graders. And I realized how I was able to bring this about: I am serious and expect them to be little adults, but at the same time I don't take myself too seriously as a teacher. I constantly joke with my kids, whether they're 6 years old or 10 years old. I'm very animated. I make faces, gestures, little comments, etc. I cover my mistakes (and I do make quite a few mistakes) with humor. And my kids love it. But at the end of the day when Carla Teacher puts her bitch face on they know I mean business (by the way, Yelena has told me I have a VERY good bitch face).

So I guess if you're reading this and thinking about being a teacher, or are teaching but still struggling on how to do things, I'd say: be strict, expect the best, but let your kids know you're still human underneath it all.

-AALA

Korean Demilitarized Zone

I have been MIA lately, which I apologize for. A lot has happened in the past month, so I've been taking a break from updating this. I hope this entry is sufficiently long enough to make up for it.

On May 1st, Yelena (a teacher at my school that I'm becoming good friends with) and I went on a trip to the Korean Demilitarized Zone. We went to an area along the DMZ called Cheorwon (although knowing how Korean pronunciation is done depending on where a certain symbol lies in the syllable box, I'm pretty sure it should be Romanized to spell Cheolwon). We went to a section of the Han Tan river that is used to get boats and rafts ready to go down the river. There was a big rock there, too, that was kind of cool.

There's a waterfall here you can't really see

We then went to an observation deck that had an insane hill to climb. There was a tram that could have taken one to the top, but Yelena and I are cheap like that, so we walked the hill. That was the tip of that iceberg. We got to the top and one can see the area that is the Demarcation Line (the official "line" that separates North from South Korea, and into North Korean territory).

On one of the hills to the left there a small North Korean post. On the hill at the very right there's a South Korean post


Here's a closer look at the South Korean post

Can you spot the North Korean post on this hill?

Me with South Korean and North Korean land behind me. Can you tell it was super windy?
Me with a Korean soldier

Afterwards we visited one of the tunnels. Back in the day during peace talks North Korea was secretly building these tunnels they could use to invade South Korea. Well, South Korea found these, and they are not a tourist attraction. We went into Tunnel #2. Unfortunately, I have no pictures because you're not supposed to take pictures there, so I left my camera on the bus. There was a TON of stair climbing in that one. My glutes got a workout, that's for sure. I was very sore from this trip the next day.

I also bought North Korean beer. I have yet to try it, as I haven't been in a beer mood, but I'm told it tastes better than South Korean beer. We shall see.

I hope this entry makes up for not updating for so long. I shouldn't go too long without another entry as this coming weekend I will be going to a Russian restaurant, a Korean baseball game, and salsa dancing, and the following weekend I have a Temple stay trip at a Buddhist temple in southern Korea, as well as a trip to the beach that same 3-day weekend. I'm excited for this as today I bought a swimsuit here in Korea, which impresses the hell out of me that I even found a swimsuit that fit as I'm not a stick and I have boobs. Yay!

-AALA