Jikjisa Temple Stay

When you are informed of a free temple stay weekend...you usually jump on that quite quickly. To be honest, seeing the word FREE was all I really needed. We've kept pretty busy on the weekends and it felt great to not spend much money. We only had to buy the train there and back which was under 10,000 Won ($10.00). 

The Gimcheon Culture Center is awesome and I made sure to send them an email telling them so after this weekend:

So we went to Jikjisa Temple on Saturday and changed into the great "burnt orange" clothes provided. Although they may not have been the most attractive, I honestly wanted to buy the pants. They were awesome! I went there in skinny jeans and extremely enjoyed this freeing experience of baggy pants...This was like reliving high school for me! For those of you who knew me 10 years ago, sports were #1 in Marie's book, and sweats were a very common thing for my friends and I, and the baggier- the better! ahah! 

We watched some informational videos about Buddhism and the Temple Stay program and went on a tour led by the monks around the Temple. Unfortunately the guide did not speak the best English or Korean for that matter, and so I didn't get to find out as much as I wanted about the different buildings.

Dinner was an interesting experience to say the least. There is definitely an order and a special process when eating at a temple. There are four bowls (or bowels as the interpreter said) all used for different things. The biggest one is used for rice and it is placed in the bottom left corner. To the right of that bowl is the next largest, the soup bowl. Above the soup bowl is the water/ utensil bowl. To the left of the water bowl is the side dish/ vegetable bowl. 

We started the dinner process by getting our bowls and correctly placing them. Then they came around with water and we poured the water from the largest bowl to the smallest one to "clean" the bowls. They followed with rice, and soup. We passed around the vegetable sides, and were instructed sooooo many times to get one piece of yellow radish to "clean" the bowl afterwards. DO NOT EAT THE YELLOW RADISH! My group of friends had an interesting temple stay to say the least. Erin was the one who didn't get the yellow radish...

We were told to eat all of our food, and when they say all, they mean ALL the food. We kept our bowl up to our mouths to cover them as we ate. Also, it should be noted that all of the food was vegetarian. That being said, the soup was surprisingly tasty and it was great knowing that there was no meat product in it. I spend a lot of time at school guessing what weird "meat" product is in our school lunches! 

They repeatedly told us to NOT eat the yellow radish.... Jake was the one who ate the yellow radish... After all of the food was eaten we put 5 spoonfuls of the "cleaning" water into the largest bowl and used our yellow radish to scrub the dish "clean" and moved the water to all the bowls. At the end we were to drink the water with floaties and eat the yellow radish. This was difficult. The water was cold, kimchi juice infested with the occasional rice bits. I also am not a fan of the yellow radish. This was just something you just had to do, stomach it and do it...

There was still a bit of the "cleaning" water left in one of the bowls and instead of waiting for the bucket to come around, many people decided to drink the rest of it. The monk thought this was crazy and asked if their stomach hurt? I found this ridiculous, because there was no difference between this "cleaning" water and the kimchi-rice infested water we had all just drank except it DIDN'T have kimchi and rice in it... I was confused! Nonetheless, I used the towel to soak up the rest of my water in my water bowl. We wiped the bowls clean with the towel and theoretically, they were now clean for the next use. 
(I believe the guys actually re- cleaned the bowls at 5:00 the next morning...)

After dinner we made lotus lantern. It seems like every time we do a craft, if you don't do it fast enough or with the exact amount of confidence needed on your face, your project will be taken over by an eager Korean woman. Maria was the one who lost her craft project. Not sure she did much on her lotus lantern. She was definitely the sacrificial lamb of that craft time... After we made the lantern we wrote a wish or a dream on it, and lit them. With this lighting of the lanterns came one of my favorite memories thus far in Korea...

Emily was the one who lit her lotus lantern on fire...

We walked outside to a different part of the temple complex to the stone pagodas. The plan was to walk around them three times for our wishes to come true. My friends and I were towards the back of the group and the rest of the 150 people had already made a trail around the pagodas.

Some commotion made me turn around and I looked to see someones lantern on fire in their hand and a monk hitting it out of their hand. I immediately start taking pictures of the lantern because all I can think of is..."What dumbass lit their lantern on fire?" After taking quite a few pictures, I look up and see that Emily isn't holding a lantern anymore, and it immediately hits me... Emily is that dumbass! 

We were not at a place and time where it was appropriate to laugh, so we were having to silently laugh and this cause tears to stream down my face! The best part was that we still had to walk around the pagodas three times and each time we had to walk by the abandoned burning lantern. On one of the passings, we saw some of the monks standing over it trying to put the fire out. It was hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing. But since it was suppose to be a very serious moment, the muffled laughter was actually painful. 

That night we had some free time which I spent walking around taking night pictures. I was very inspired when we were walking around with our lanterns, but by the time I went back and got my camera, my inspiration was lost. Lights out was 10:00, and as early as that sounds, it was nice to go to bed early especially knowing that the wake up call was going to be at 5:00 am.

We slept in an oven. The floor heating in Korea can be nice, but when it is too high, there is no way to escape it because you are actually sleeping directly on the floor! Wasn't the worst sleep I've gotten in Korea, but it was by no mean good sleep. 

At 5:00 am we were woken up by a monk. We had some time to get ready and make our way to breakfast. I normally do not eat breakfast, so the idea of eating rice and kimchi was unbearable. Luckily, it was less of a process for breakfast so I could slip by and join some others that had already eaten and pretend that I had as well. 

There were many times during this weekend that we weren't really do anything but sitting around. On a more structured event I'm sure we would have been doing some silent time or prayers or something. I think that they wanted to wake us up at 5:00 to give us the monk experience, but in reality they had nothing for us to do so we sat around until 7:30 or 8:00.

At this time we learned the correct process of doing 108 bows. It involved 5 points of us (2 knees, 2 forearms/ hands, and our forehead) touching the mat, and then our hands turning upwards and raising up to our ears. As we did this we were to say a prayer or wish and put a bead onto our rosary-like necklace. Then we would stand up and repeat the process 107 more times. At around  bow #77 I started to count down. It was a little physically draining, but not too bad. The next day though my legs were in a lot of pain. Apparently I don't use my quads enough...

After the bows we changed back into our regular clothes and got on a bus. None of us knew where we were going to be honest, but we drove for almost and hour to finally stop in a small town at a Korean BBQ. This was a welcome surprise! Even though it hadn't been that long, it was nice to have some meat! All of it was free! We feasted! It was awesome. Then we got back on the bus and drove another 20 minutes to a random cabbage field. We jumped off the bus and went and "harvested" a cabbage that we each got to keep and take with us... (As if we were all wanting a random huge cabbage...) But it was still really random and fun. 

Then we jumped back on the bus again and went to a location where we put on aprons and bandannas and were able to make our own kimchi. They already had the cabbage fermented or at least slimy / squishy, and the goop that you put on it made as well. So we basically just spread the goop all over all of the crevices of the cabbage and put our newly made kimchi, that we also go to keep in a bag. 
Those who know kimchi also know that it is smelly stuff. So after we made the kimchi, 150 random foreigners boarded their trains and buses to go back home with freshly made kimchi and huge heads of cabbage. I can't even smell very well or even at all, but I was able to smell that train! ahah

It really was an interesting and informative weekend. I'm glad that I participated and I'm also glad that the Gimcheon Cultural Center added the events on the second day. It got us out in the country doing random things and of course I am so thankful for my free cabbage... more to follow on that! :)

My cabbage ended up becoming "water kimchi" made by my co-teachers mother. At least someone got some use of it. Now the kimchi that I made.... It became friends with the garbage. I had planned to take it to school as well, but after 10 minutes of it being in my home, it was all I could smell in my apartment, and I was NOT okay with that! :)