Dog gone

For those of you who followed on Snapchat over the weekend, I promise a post on our DMZ tour is coming soon!

But in the meantime, here is a brief update of what's been going on with us lately.

It snowed on Thanksgiving Day!

That is the view from our apartment. Isn't it lovely? Well for someone that's seen snow about 10 times in her life (ahem, me), I think it looks just magical.

I ate Korean street food.

I braved the chicken on a stick and deep fried yaki mandu over the weekend and it truly warmed my soul. We had been warned about the chicken on a stick though. We were told to break the stick after eating that delicious snack because the vendors may re-use sticks from the trash. We were told that eating stick food was a risk we assumed on our own. And from my own assessment, I could see that the oil used for the deep frying of the yaki mandu was not fresh. It was really the opposite of fresh. So I just put my little knowledge of health and nutrition in a dark and lonely place (listeria, what? cancer? psshhh!) so that I could take a moment to enjoy these treasures of the night.

Our "Sadie" would never run away!

Yeah, our Sadie broke out of the apartment and ran off. For a dog that can open doors, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. I imagine she was only out for a little while before she was recognized by a friend of ours (thanks Alli!) and returned to captivity where we seem to have a very difficult time keeping her. So please don't call the number in the picture. It's long distance anyway.

Everyone say, "Kimchi!"

Talk about diving head first into some cultural experiences! Mark and I spent our weekend at a Buddhist temple about an hour and a half away from where we now call home. And no, we’re not Buddhist. We just took advantage of an opportunity to see how Buddhist monks live and catch a glimpse of the history of Buddhism.

When we first arrived at Magoksa Temple, we were greeted by vendors selling some handpicked, hand-peeled produce, much of which we did not recognize. Nonetheless, we could not refuse when one woman offered a sample from her basket to us. No really, we could not refuse. She was insistent. Luckily, the things tasted mild and crunchy. We postulated that it was some sort of nut. Hazelnuts maybe? We were just glad that the man who appeared to be selling muddy water in re-used bottles didn’t offer any samples to us.

Tourists, meet locals

Hand-peeled free samples

Once on the temple grounds, we were assigned to our rooms and given special tourist clothing to wear for the weekend. The rooms had no beds. Each individual received two blankets and a pillow and had to set up shop on the floor for the evening snooze. The clothing was similar in style to what the monks wear, but in far more vibrant “look at the tourist” colors.

Our room, with a heated floor

Look at the tourists!

Next was lunch. Served cafeteria-style, we consumed the first meal of an all-vegetarian diet for the weekend. And the first of a nearly all-kimchi diet for the weekend as well. After lunch (and all meals) we cleaned our own dishes.

But first, shoes off

Clockwise from the top: Fried sweet potatoes, 5 types of kimchi, white rice. On the side: seaweed soup.

Then, we had some free time to explore the grounds before the guided tour began.

All hand-painted

Monk on a cell phone. (They're just like us!)

We learned that many of the buildings on the grounds are nearly 1000 years old. Dang. That’s some sturdy construction.

Room with 1000 Buddhas

Buddha, Buddha, Buddha, rockin' everywhere

These statues were "guardians" of the temple, similar to gargoyles for the Catholic church.

Did you know that monks work out? Okay, maybe not really. But that’s what it felt like when we practiced bowing. We did 108 bows, to be precise. Apparently that’s child’s play compared to the 3000 bows that monks may do daily. And let me tell you, those kinds of reps are killer on the quads! The 108 bows are meant to represent 108 afflictions or unwholesome thoughts in the mind. Monks repent or cleanse the mind by doing these bows each day.

Thankfully after the fitness experience (which took about 25 minutes), the monks roasted some sweet potatoes for us to help replete our glycogen stores.

I’m not a person that is crazy about sweet potatoes. But these were somehow extremely satisfying. Perhaps it was their smoky flavor and the cool weather? Or perhaps it was because they were one of three foods we recognized all weekend – the others being white rice and pineapple slices.

It's a feeding frenzy!

Dinner included more rice, more kimchi, and another type of soup. This was the stuff that fueled us for the evening’s activities: meditation, chanting, and ringing the giant gong.

Meditation, which we did for about 30 minutes, was difficult for a couple of novices like ourselves. Plus sitting on the floor in a cross-legged position really stiffens up the knees on people older than five. Chanting was done in a building dedicated to the “Buddha of the Universe.” Again, difficult to follow, especially since more bowing was involved and my legs were already burned out from the afternoon session. But we were handsomely rewarded with evening tea, rice cake desserts, and pineapple slices while we crafted a string of prayer beads to represent the 108 bows we had preformed earlier.

Buddha of the Universe

And ringing that giant gong made the whole day’s activities worthwhile. Plus, it’s a tourist’s dream come true.

It was also a dream that became reality when the monks rang it at 3:30 am, per their usual schedule. Awoken from out not-so-deep slumber on our floor beds, we realized that the monks started their days long before we did. We had been invited to begin our day with them at 3:00 am, but like many others in our tour group, we had declined. Rather, we opted to catch about another hour and a half of floor sleep and participate in the second activity of the day: more meditation.

Following morning meditation was the breakfast ritual. Before breakfast we were given two guidelines: you must be silent and you must eat all of your food. Cue the panic attack. Having no idea what we were about to be served and having no way to communicate about it, I nearly considered going back to floor bed to avoid this interaction. But much to my relief, we were able to serve ourselves breakfast in whatever quantity we chose. Which is why I chose the simplest of the options I could possibly select: white rice, sprouts, a chunk of tofu, a slice of pickled radish, and a bowl of soup. The breakfast meal also offered several forms of kimchi as well as lettuce with some sort of dressing on it. But at 6:00 am I could barely handle the thought of anything fermented on my plate, much less handle a pair of chopsticks.

After breakfast we swept the courtyard with some relatively primitive-looking but surprisingly effective brooms.

Effective for sweeping, not for riding.

Kimchi pots

The final activity of the morning was my favorite part of the weekend experience: going for a hike. Also, it was the only activity that I actually knew how to do without major guidance from a monk.

Steep hills on this hike!

The guard dog at the temple, Rufus, joined us on the hike. Why they call this dog a ‘guard dog’ is a mystery to me, because Rufus was one of the friendliest creatures I’ve ever met. Not to mention, he looked like a stuffed animal.

Rufus the guard dog

Lunch was served just before we left. But the thought of more kimchi and unrecognizable side dishes prompted us to skip this one meal and take a second hike instead.

Most of the kimchi we’ve tried in Korea so far has been pretty tasty. But we didn’t want too much of a good thing! Actually, we decided to go to lunch at Chili’s on base after the tour so we could get something with bacon on it.

So much cabbage!