James, Silvia, Katharina, Angelica, and myself decided that we wanted to go away for a little weekend excursion so we all agreed upon doing a temple stay. Katharina + Silvia suggested that we go to a nearby temple located in Gwanghwa-Do which is a little island off Seoul..... I think. Anyway, it was about a 2 hour bus ride so we figured that'd be the best choice.... because our other option was a 5hour bus ride away. We traipsed about Sinchon in search of the mysterious and elusive Sinchon bus terminal.. say what? At one point, this little search had me stumbling into a police station on the verge of super giggle fitzgerald(our friend who is very near and dear to our hearts)... Anyway, the terminal was only about 50 meters away from the police station which the policemen pointed out to us, incredulous of the fact that we were too stupid to see it. As always, fucking wae-gooks. Hee hee.
At the terminal, we tried to figure out where exactly we had to go. Katharina had a few names written down on a piece of paper so I tried to ask some official looking passerbys about which bus we should take.... by a stroke of bad luck, we managed to bump into an irate middle-aged man who was content to be in contempt..... he was the type of ahjuhshee(old Korean man) that I've spent the vast majority of my trip in Korea trying to avoid.. He proceeded to yell at us... oops, I mean, speak at an unimaginably loud volume telling us that we were doing all of the wrong things, that we were little pieces of shit that should kill ourselves immediately.. o.k. maybe he wasn't saying all of this but I honestly couldn't even focus on trying to figure whatever the hell it was he WAS saying because I was too busy trying to pretend that I wasn't noticing that he was spitting all over my face with each of his seemingly disdainful and derisive words.... uggggggghhhhhhhh. Is it rude to attempt to wipe the spit off my face right in front of him? Better that than hold up an umbrella to shield myself, right? Fuck nuts. It's funny how despite the language barrier, someone is still able to berate you with such ease. Finally we decide that we didn't want to listen to that ogre and we went to buy our bus tickets. Luckily, that decision paid off as it was a pretty easy trip to our destination.
Sho nough, we made it without a hitch.
We were greeted by a little monk of Vietnamese descent who spoke absolutely no English or Korean... and Phillip.. who was our German friend for the weekend. Well, he was James' German friend since they were bunkmates. As soon as we got there, we put on some ridiculously cool monk clothes.. the clothes that we'd remain in all weekend... We looked silly and therefore, laughed ourselves silly... at the sight of each other and at the sight of ourselves... hells yes. Anyway, we were then introduced to the Russian monk who would end up being our mentor/guide throughout our stay. We spent most of the day(and all weekend) drinking various types of tea.. including dandelion, green tea, Vietnamese green tea... and I forget what else. Oh man, I'm attempting to write this at 5:30 in the am right now after a loooong night... so we'll see how this goes... so far, so not good. Yikes.
We ate in a tar pit... well, pretty much. The whole area was under construction.. it was pretty nauseating to eat right next to all of the tar... I couldn't stay in there for too long otherwise I'd get a headache..... boo. So we were exhausted by 7pm and couldn't wait to go to bed like the lamers we are.. we quickly fell asleep until we awoke 2 hours later because the undeulbang(heated floors) was roasting our asses. It was a hot shhhhweaty mess. We stayed awake for a bit, had a brief encounter with giggle fitzgerald, and then attempted to sleep again because we would have a 3am wake up call. Holy shit, I usually don't even sleep before then... anyway, we woke up, went to the temple and did the 108 prostrations. I have no idea how I completed them all.. it definitely got a bit painful after a while but I think that if I stopped, I wouldn't have been able to start again. anyway, I'm going to just add anecdotes to the pictures because I'm getting too lazy and forgetful... wuhoot!
apparently gollum is serving us up some tea....
I can has cheezburger?
Before she found out about the "no snacking" policy...
the assembly line
a quite literal interpretation of a lotus lantern..
mad chillin'
the meditation room.....
all we seemed to want to do is sleep.... 
the space between...
the little Vietnamese monk was extremely into composing family friendly/picture perfect shots for us.. so he plopped one of the German girls down on one of the statues and then stuck the muddy little beast into her hands.. which she held him at arms length away.. because he was so muddy and beastlike, of course. 
the poor monk from Sri Lanka was freezing because he's not used to such cold weathers
So I was having a conversation with the Russian monk about how cute I thought the dog was.. and then he mentioned that there was also another doggy located on the premises. He also stated, in somewhat of a matter of fact way that this doggy refuses to listen to anyone, so he remains in prison.... the next morning when we were going on our morning walk, this adorable little wildebeest appeared...... In all his muddy glory, the fast and the furry-ous
0 comments:
Post a Comment