We had off for Lunar New Year (often known as Chinese New Year back home), so I headed down to Daejeon to visit Maggie. We had a wonderful time. After about 5 hours of traveling due to heavy traffic with the holiday, I finally arrived. On Saturday, we did a bit of shopping and then went to a pseudo-traditional (as traditional as you get with a few Koreans and lots of foreigners) Lunar New Year party. It was great! Judy, a Korean friend of Maggie's, was fully dressed in hanbok, the traditional Korean dress for big holidays. She was making 빈데떡, bindaetteok, a Korean style pancake. Mmmm.
We made a lot of food...
...and Maggie and I helped peel the chestnuts.
We had our feast...
... and then played two traditional Korean games. 윷놀이 (yut nori), a game involving tossing sticks, and a traditional Korean hacky sack game with a funny-shaped ... shuttlecock looking device. I (miraculously) won it for the women's competition with 7 hits. Niceuuuh. The boys, though, to decide who went first, went with the tried and true "Rock, Paper, Scissors", the unquestioned order-determining force in Korea.
We had a little memorial ceremony before eating. There's (of course) rice wine involved...
... and lots of bowing and pulling things in circles. In the end, we all did the bowing together. I think we look Muslim, but who's to say.
On Sunday, Lunar New Year, we went on a temple hunt to find a 30m Buddha. And we found it! Two different buses and eight dollars (that's it!) later, we found ourselves in little, deserted Boeun near 속리산 (Songnisan) national park. It was very quaint. And fairly empty.
We made it to 법주사 (Beopjusa), the temple, and it was definitely worth the trip. Similar to other Korean temples... but there was a fantastic 5-story pagoda in the middle...
... and the 30m Buddha. Beautiful.
There was also a beautiful stone carving on a huge bolder to the side of the huge Buddha image. I wish you could see how big this is! The rock itself is at least 15ft tall.
On Monday, we headed to another nearby town, 부여 (Buyeo). Also lovely. There was the beautiful 부소산성 (Busosanseong) fortress. From the top, there was a beautiful overview of the city.
This was also the site where many women threw themselves off the cliff to their deaths to escape enslavement by their persecutors in the 600AD. The pagoda was built to remember them. It's a tragically beautiful place.
We then made our way over to 정림사 (Jeonglimsa). While the rest of it was pretty underwhelming, this Buddha statue was incredible.
Only the head has been reconstructed. The rest of the body remains untouched. It was so unexpected to see! And just breathtakingly old. Awesome.
Two weeks after my trip to Daejeon, my coworker and Sarah and I headed down to Daegu, about 2 hours south on the express train. The love motel (what we call cheap hotels in Korea... usually still rentable by the hour... and they don't often give you keys because most people just use them and then leave...) we stayed it was clean, comfy, and very kitchy, a combination of spectacularly clashing patterns. We headed out the next day to Haeinsa, a huge temple of nearly 90 different buildings on 가야산, Gayasan mountain. Built in 802
We had to walk about a kilometer up along a beautiful rocky stream path...
... before reaching the temple, a world heritage site. (That's what the stone says.)
The temple buildings were just beautiful with the mountains, the fog, and the clean air.
We moved up to the site of the Tripitaka Koreana, "the world's most comprehensive and oldest intact version of Buddhist canon in Chinese script, with no known errors or errata in the 52,382,960 characters which are organized in over 1496 titles and 6568 volumes" (Wikipedia).
First carved into wooden blocks in 1087, many were destroyed in the Mongolian invasion, the blocks were recarved from 1236 to 1251.
We weren't actually allowed to take pictures of the blocks, and the blocks were on shelves in rooms that were pretty much barred off. I had to steal some photos from Wikipedia. It was pretty cool.
The temple itself was just so beautiful!
In addition to this traveling, I also moved! It was pretty... epic to say the least. I felt like an African salesman with everything strapped to my back, making trips between my old place and my new place (about a 10 minute walk).
I'm in a new home now, 10 minutes closer to everything (which is really nice), and it already feels really homey.
So, yeah. Things are good. :D Especially because tonight I went to see my beloved gospel choir. Life is great. If only I could have move music in my life, then it would be wonderful. Right now, I'm not even dreading Monday that much! :D
Don't be strangers! I'd love to hear from you!
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