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