Daewonsa

In one of my first weeks in Korea, I was asking about Korean Buddhist temples and someone said to me, "Ah, you've seen one temple, you've seen them all".

I beg to differ.

Yesterday, I went to Daewonsa, a Tibetan Buddhist museum and temple complex in the middle of nowhere (for those of you who are keeping score, this is the third temple in a week - Seonamsa, Songwangsa and Daewonsa)

After a typical Friday night of too much food and too much dongdongju, I was up bright and early on Saturday morning to meet Jen and Paddy. Okay, Jen is a human from Vancouver, Paddy is a toy poodle from Korea (there will be a post one of these days about the whole animal issue....) that Jen found last March.

And so our day began. Like all good explorers, we had no maps, no real concrete information, no real bus schedule, some money and our Lonely Planet Korean Phrasebooks. All that we really knew about Daewonsa was that there was a bus that could take us there from Boseong at around 11:30. Boseong is a town full of green tea plantations about an hour from Suncheon. With a bit of time to kill in Boseong, we explored the "town", which is only slightly larger than my apartment. Once again, the foreigner factor kicked in and we had people stopping to talk to us on the street, little kids following us, and university students asking to take a picture with us. Jen got yelled at by one Korean ajumma, but that's because we were taking pictures of the 10 chickens stuffed in a wire cage in her little shop.

We finally got the bus to Daewonsa and bumped and swerved our way through gorgeous hilly terrain, small villages and fields of irises as we followed the curves and flow of a river. An older lady got on at one of the villages and sat right near us. She tried to pet Paddy, who snapped and snarled (which reallly surprised Jen, as she really is the sweetest dog in the world). The lady was totally obsessed with Jen and Paddy and, with the help of a girl who was translating for us, asked Jen if she could have Paddy! It was really bizarre. The lady also grabbed my hair (it's a real no-no to touch a person's head in Korea), so we figure that she was not all that mentally balanced....

Having left Suncheon at 9:00 am, we finally made Daewonsa at 1 pm. And WOW. The photos I just uploaded to Flickr do not do it justice. We started out at a museum full of Tibetan Buddhist artifacts (said to have been smuggled from Tibet to Korea. We couldn't really take pictures of the numerous statues (including some very Christian items: Joseph holding Jesus; Buddha holding a sheep! These were, of course, next to sculptures of multi-armed and faced figures umm... you know... doing... ummm,... "in union".), the costumes, the printing blocks, the scrolls, the sand mandala.... really nice. We shopped our way out the door (I got incense and a "Free Tibet" wall hangy thingy and gifts for some folks back home) and, as it was now after 2, decided to look for something to eat.

We ended up in the main temple area where every step elicited gasps of amazement from Jen and I. We couldn't stop taking pictures. And, except for about another dozen or so people, we had the place to ourselves. It really did have a different feel to it than the other temples I've seen. Unfortunately, the eating area was not serving any food so we continued to explore the paths in the bamboo forest, temple buildings and numerous statues with our stomachs growling.

We ended up back at the museum to ask about bus times and... get this... the cashier at the museum set us up with a little lunch in the back room! We sat down to a place of rice, kimchi, squid, and bamboo, with boricha (cold barley tea) and rice cake for dessert. Can you believe it? You arrive at a place and say "I'm hungry" and you get fed!

With an hour to wait until the bus came, we wandered around another lotus pond and sat in a pagoda to look through all that we had collected and bought. (I had picked up a brochure (all in Korean) about temple stays that are offered there - I think I will try to do one there. Hey, the Dalai Lama has stayed there, so why can't I?) Then, with thunder rumbling in the distance, the skies just opened and I got to experience my first monsoon rain. Yup - the rainy season is beginning, so I can look forward to a few hours of torrential rain every day.

We finally made it back to Suncheon and ran like hell (through rain, lightning etc) to get to Gemma's place (90 minutes late) to eat an awesomely delicious veggie meal, which was greatly appreciated after our Buddhist starvation day.

Geez, this post is long. Are you still with me?

In other news....

- Yes, Malaysia... Oh yes. But when? My school and I are having a bit of a disagreement on my vacation time.
- Tomorrow, I leave for Gwangju to judge a provincial English competition (with about a million other foreign teachers). It's my first official JLP "Business Trip", and I'm excited to be seeing Gwangju again (it's where we stayed during Orientation week).
- I have another little beastie in my apartment. Frank, Matt and Helen's dog, is enjoying the hospitality of Casa Parker this weekend. He's already stolen a sock and cleaned out the peanut butter jar. What do dogs do? Why isn't he more cat like? - then he would just sleep and stare at blank spots on the wall.....

And... I've uploaded a bunch more photos (of my students and of Daewonsa) to the Flickr page.