The thing I disliked most on this trip
The following are a variety of journal entries as I couldn't take my laptop.
We left Incheon this morning and our James, Angelina, Jenny, June and Lisa were there to see us off. It was so sweet of them! I will miss them dearly. Thankfully, some of them will be coming to Lander soon and I wold love to come back to Incheon at some point.
I've been amazed at how much I enjoy it here, Sangdo is such an urban area that I didn't think I'd like it as much as I do and food wise, the only thing I miss is mac and cheese. You can get everywhere by subway and the people are amazing. I will definitely plan on coming back at some point.
Well, I am at the monastery and I could easily spend days just exploring this area. It's nestled in the mountains and the wildlife is everywhere. I found a quail or a pheasant. :D I have chosen my spot for mediation if we get to choose. I can watch birds and look down at the temple from here. It's like nothing else matters but experiencing this moment.
We experienced a ceremony tonight and it was terrifying to me. Honestly, the paintings are almost identical to what I imagine a demon to be. I was honestly on the verge of tears. I was SO panicked! I started praying for safety and soon, I felt calmer. Then it ended and I was happy about that. I mean, they locked us in the temple with them and made us do full body bows and chant to these gold statues and paintings. Not my thing. Now we are sleeping on weird mats with bean-bag pillows. It's not going to be a fun night. Oh, and I can hear bug wings flying everywhere.
Okay, so last night, I had to go to the bathroom. So I got up and went, got back into the room (which is like two steps from the bathroom) and just as I was laying back down, I heard someone heading over to the door in a hurry. Outside the room, I was in. It started on the side opposite of the door, circled the room and stopped in front of the door. So I think one of the monks heard me open and close the doors and came to investigate. I'm glad I was back in since I don't speak Korean!
This morning, got up at 4 a.m. went to do more chants and bows (I refused to chant this time) and then did 108 prostrations (full body bows). That was hard. Then we did 20 minutes of mediation (not that exciting to me) and finally hiked up a mountain. Okay, so this was supposed to be walking mediation which is silent and slow. Well, I was done and everyone else was talking anyway (including the monk). So I ran up the mountain because we were back outside! It was awesome! I love the scenery and was so excited to get to the top. We saw an old fortress wall and the view from the top of the mountain is insanely amazing! Yes, I loved being outside. Ah, but before the mountain hike, we had breakfast. This consisted of rice, bean sprout soup and tofu for me. Well, we have nothing to drink while eating and then when we get done, we have to get more water, rinse out our bowls and drink that water. Uh....yeah. Then we repeat the process a second time. Oh yeah, the first time we were rinsing out our bowls we were scrubbing them with a piece of radish that we were supposed to eat when done. Well, just the juice in the water from that thing was giving me a migraine so I just hid it and disposed of it. No migraine inducing stuff for me!
Other good points of the temple stay, our guide was really nice, our monk was very kind and interested in us and we enjoyed asking him questions, we got to ring the bell. So there were some good things. But I definitely did not like the cameras in my face constantly. I mean, even while I was filling out the evaluation form, one of the reporters stuck his camera in my paper. I of course, a bit ticked off, half glared at him and wrote that I was tired of the constant cameras on my form. They were writing an article for some local newspaper. We had a reporter, a video camera guy and a camera guy constantly watching our every move. So much pressure to perform! I think I would have liked it better without the cameras. Although, I didn't have to take any pictures while I was there.