Monday, September 30, 2013

A Korean Surprise: The Teacher's Trip

I was walking to school today when I just happened to meet up with two of the other English teachers at the cross walk before the school . As we crossed the street and walked towards school, one of the teachers asked me "You know we're going to a temple today?"

What? No. And clearly not, which in retrospect is probably why she was asking. I was wearing a maxi skirt and sandals.

Apparently exams were only going to go until 12, and after that we were going on a field trip for teachers.  SURPRISE!!!

Not that I was disappointed. I am down for sightseeing, especially since I have basically no responsibilities at school this week as the students take their exams.

Of course, initially I thought we were just going to a temple, so I didn't really think my wardrobe selection was going to be a big problem.  But around 12:30 one of my co-teachers came over and asked if I knew about the trip.  I told her I didn't know until the morning and she said "Your fashion is no good."

What I got from the following conversation was that there was going to be a lot of walking involved and my sandals were not going to be practical.

So I rushed back to my apartment to change my attire, went back to school, and got on the bus with the rest of the other teachers.

As I was sitting on the bus one of the other English teachers came on and asked if I would ride in her car with her.  She is probably one of the nicest people I've met in Korea, so of course I agreed.  She likes getting to talk to me because it's an opportunity for her to practice her english.  Many of the English teachers here have said the same thing--they want to talk to me because so much of what they do is teaching grammar and reading so they can read English and comprehend everything, but when they try to speak it's difficult for them to pull out the words they want.  Obviously I get it, and it's my job to talk to people, so I hopped in her car and we continued in her car behind the bus.

We got to our first destination where we got to see a really cool temple.  I wish I remembered the name, but as is typically the case with Korean words, I was able to repeat is a few times, and now the name is gone from my memory.  It's apparently a really old temple, and they usually only let people visit it on Buddha's birthday.  I was really amazed by the temples because the detail was absolutely breathtaking.  I really wish I would have had my nice camera with me because my pictures don't even begin to show the intricate details of the temple.  I saw tons of pictures of temples before I came to Korea, but I can honestly say they are a million times more impressive in person.
 




There were Buddhist monks and other people inside of the temple, so I didn't get any pictures of the inside, but it was also really amazing.  There was a huge Buddha, as well as some other statutes.

After we saw the temples, we walked up a path through the woods (which was fun because it rained this morning and I was only wearing my Tom's), until we reached a waterfall, a stone Buddha, and some stones with Korean written on them, which was apparently done by some historical figure.  The language barrier pretty much prevented me from getting a full explanation of that one.


After that, we got back to the bus, and in my case the car, and we continued on to our next destination.  This time we hiked (again, fun in my Tom's) and we got to another little waterfall, which apparently is connected to a legend of a dragon, but I don't get it (and the explanation I received didn't really make much sense).

After that the teacher I was driving with headed home because she is a vegetarian and the next stop was dinner. We went to a small place with an amazing view of the mountains and were served a selection of pork and goat meat.  I stuck to the pork.

As we were waiting for some people to finish dinner, I got a chance to talk to some of the younger English teachers.  It was actually really good because I don't get to talk to them often, and they by far have the best English of any of the teachers in the department so we could joke around and laugh a bit--something that is hard to do with the large language barrier with some of the other teachers.

We got back on the bus and we were all really tired....a group of teachers went to noraebang, but we decided to head home.

All in all, it was a totally unexpected, but interesting day.  When I woke up this morning I never would have thought that I would end up visiting temples, but Korea is keeping life interesting, and I'm appreciating that.

2 comments:

  1. This temple is hcalled Boemsa. it is quite a well known Zen temple and very ancient. I taught ESl in Mungyeong for over three years. I enjoy reading your blog!

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    1. Yeah, this was from my first month in Korea. Almost two years in, I'm more familiar with it now. I actually teach at a school right near it now.

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