I know where Buddha got his belly. A few days ago, my fellow TaLKers and I along with our Korean co-teachers (the Korean people who will be our translators in class) got to take a trip up into the mountains to visit a famous Buddhist Temple to observe a tea ceremony and Monks dressed in baggy gray outfits performing their daily prayers. And of course we got to eat too! I was in heaven (or I had reached the sublime as the Buddhists would say :o) ) because Buddhists are vegetarians and they eat laaaarrge quantities of food. But let me recount the day before I dive right into food descriptions and pictures.
Geographically speaking, Daegu is situated in a basin, with mountains encasing the city. In order to get to the temple, we took a charter bus up into the mountains, barreling up the squirreliest roads fathomable, dodging old ladies with baskets of vegetables precariously balanced on their heads and children playing stick ball in the streets. Thank goodness I had the foresight to pack a lot of Drammamine.
Once we arrived, it was a steep uphill climb to the pavilion where we to participate in early morning prayer. There was a lady dressed in traditional Buddhist garb who taught us the correct way to praise Buddha when you first enter the temple (a man strikes a small, hollow wooden gourd over and over while you kneel and place your forehead on the ground 3 different times).
Sound easy? Hardly! My knees were shaking with the effort to keep my feet close together while simultaneously squatting down onto my knees, bending over to touch my head to the floor and never once using my hands to assist me. And the woman who was giving the lesson performed the prayer around 7 times... (that's 21 bows for all you mathematicians out there ;) ) yet by far the most comical element of the prayer is going into what I like to describe as "trance" mode. You must sit on the wooden floor, Indian style as we would call it (by the way, the lady kept saying "yoga..yoga!" to me- yaaaay flexibility!) with ramrod straight posture and you must try to focus your gaze on the tip of your nose and keep your tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth. You should try this right now.... stop reading and give it a shot!. We had to hold this position for 5 minutes at a time. I'm not sure about enlightenment, but I definitely felt dizzy.
After prayer, we had a waif of a woman give us a tour of Buddha's stomping grounds. This particular temple is touted as being over 1,500 years-old, and to see it is to believe it. As the story goes, long ago a phoenix landed in this sacred spot and became one with the surrounding mountains. A phoenix is the fabled flaming bird that symbolizes rebirth and renewal (HUGE tenets in Buddhism), and on the eaves of every building, there were brightly painted birds symbolizing the phoenix. Coolest of all was the phoenix tail though- there was a hefty slab of reddish rock jutting out of the stone staircase leading up to Buddha's effigy and below it were three oval-shaped white boulders. This was the phoenix's tail and 3 "wishing" eggs that you could touch for wishes.
I touched each stone and wished for the continued good health of all my loved ones, so I hope everyone is feeling extra blessed ^.^
Here are some photos of the scenery. It was a gray, damp day, which was nice since Korea has been every bit as sweltering as Florida.
There were 4 of these big dudes, and each one serves as a protector for the temple.
I always love to photograph the ceilings of temples. look at how ornate the patterns are! By the way, the flower is a lotus, the holy flower of Buddha.
Each roof tile has a hand-painted prayer on the underside. Similar to La Segrada Familia in Spain (google it!), many Buddhist temples seem to be funded by donations. So visitors can purchase a tile for like $5-$10 and it will be fitted to one of the buildings in need of fresh roofing. It's a means of inexpensive Korean health insurance :o)
Buddhists revere all lifeforms... even creepy, man-eating spiders. (Ok, so it was the size of a quarter... but it looks huge in this picture!) When we had tea later in the day, our host explained that hot water leftover from afternoon tea cannot be immediately tossed out because it could inadvertently kill an ant or worm. Whoa.
Look very closely at the top of the temple and you will notice a swastika. The swastika is all over Korea from cell phone accessories to swastika sweet rice cakes and children's underwear. It even signifies vegetarian food on packages! What the swastika actually means is eternity, and literally translates to "ongoing luck". Because the Nazis generally used a right-facing swastika, the Buddhist religion usually uses a leftward-facing swastika to differentiate it from the horrific stigma the rightward symbol carries (however, the swastika was NEVER meant to represent anything but positive qualities). An interesting note: I looked it up and the leftward facing swastika means mercy and love while the rightward-facing one signifies strength and intelligence...
MASSIVE BUDDHA! (Think University of Florida Century Bell Tower huge..) He had multiple neck rolls and huuuuge, drooping earlobes. Probably the only respected fat person in Korea ;)
This tasted like river water.
My completely vegetarian Buddhist meal. Tofu, cabbage, spicy curried rice (the red stuff), potato-leek patties and lotus root! The lotus roots are the circular, tan things with black sesame seeds on them. You can't eat just one.
The lady who gave us the praying and subsequent tea ceremony demonstrations. Tea ceremony lasts for about an hour just to make a single pot of loose-leaf green tea. (Buddha seriously needs to be introduced to sugar and cream..) But it was fun and incredibly authentic. I just had a numb butt for a solid 2 hours afterward.You must offer 3 cups of tea. One to your neighbor, one to God and lastly one to yourself.
Korean people are cuddly. They have no concept of "the bubble" and are constantly in your personal space. I have no clue who this girl it, but everyone here likes to take pictures with foreigners. Great for times when you are feeling lonely... not so good for times like, oh let's see.... showering! At every hotel, I had a maid walk right into the bathroom while I was showering to restock towels and check the shampoo bottle.
Remember to wash your hands :) I love this!After our temple visit, we drove to a nearby museum that housed all the greatest brass works of Korea. Apparently, Daegu is famous for it's brass bowls, chopsticks, cymbals, etc. Here are a few of the more impressive pieces in the museum.
This is how many dishes are served in a typical, traditional Korean meal.
Funeral candlesticks
My battle cry. This gong made your ears ring!
So funny! This mat (and those 4 sticks flying through the air) are a traditional, ancient Korean board game. You had to move pawns across a map and these sticks told you how many spaces to move (like dice). However, each wooden stick had a blank side too, so you had to toss them a certain way to get high numbers. Enter in this insane little Korean lady. She is a prime example of what we would call a "Hajima". Notice the large, Poker-player visor, the socks paired with flip flops and the baggy, elastic waist pants. These are the traits of all Hajimas and they are to be feared! These are the type of women who will snatch you by the ear and holler at you in public... and consequently the types of women who will snatch board game dice from you to show you how the game SHOULD be played. Every time she threw the sticks, she shouted some kind of unintelligible hawk-like screech. And she won. Every. Time. Fear the Hajima, for she is very crafty!
After this day, we had another 'adventure" day where we visited an ancient folk village and Korean steel mill. I like to refer to this day as Korean good PR day because, honestly, why the heck else would we visit these places?
Unfortunately, they would not allow us to take photos of the steel mill, but it turned out to be fascinating. The mill is called POSCO, and it is the 4th largest producer or steel in the world. The complex is located on the northern coast of South Korea, and it is as large as Stanton Island in NY. They lead us on a five minute walk through one of the steel-processing buildings, and I have never seen anything like it before! A 4 football-fields long-conveyor belt was carrying these yacht-sized molten plates of steel across a constant flow of freezing-cold water. The steel was neon orange, and the water would skitter across the surface like oil in a frying pan. 70% of the steel produced in the plant is utilized domestically, but I will note that on my new KitchenAid stand mixer that I received form my birthday (Thanks Mom and Dad!) the mixing bowl comes from Korea!!
Below are some photos of the Ancient Korean folk village that we visited. People actually still live and work in these villages, and they seem to me to favor the hippie communes on the 60s. Everyone lives and works together, sharing everything and becoming one giant, extended family.
In Korean culture, only the mentally-unstable wear flowers in their hair... which my tour guide pointed out to me directly after I took this photo.
Kimchi pots, which are buried in the ground for 6+ weeks to create the spicy fermented cabbage dish that accompanies every meal.
Meryl Streep's Korean twin was our tour guide!!
Can you tell who is Korean and who isn't?
Rice fields!I would like to introduce you to someone: Seong Ji. She is a very special person: my Korean co-teacher. Since starting this post, I have already moved into my apartment. That blog update will come tomorrow, but just know that absolutely nothing would be possible with Seong ji ("sung-gee"). She and I are becoming fast friends, and I will talk about her more in depth in my next entry. This could be one of the few pictures where I catch her off-guard though, because Koreans hate not posing for photos.
As for now, I am off to tackle the subway and try and navigate around town to meet up with some friends. Wish me luck, and I will post the saga of my apartment-settling experience soon.
love the pictures and comments
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love dad