More "Informative" Workshops.....(sigh)

Well, not much going on at present, so I figure most of this post will be focused on the absurd workshops I went through the last two days. School is, as I write this, officially over for the semester. The last few weeks, since I posted last, have been mostly doing evaluations of the students in order to help the co-teacher grade and assess the student's levels, so nothing too crazy. Honestly, I could have given the grades without even administering the speaking tests. The students that participate regularly in class and talk to me a bunch all got A's and B's, while the students that never talk or only talk in Korean to me (and there are quite a few) got C's or D's. Surprise, surprise.

Most of the time at work the last few weeks has been spent working on my winter camps, which until two or 3 days ago, I had only a very vague understanding of who I would be teaching. You know, stuff thats normally very crucial, like how many students I'll be teaching at a time and what their ages/abilities are. The details have been changing almost daily. I feel terrible for the co-teacher cuz she's the one having to deal with all the 180s and then relaying it to me. For example, originally (about a month or so ago) our school wasn't going to have camps, so I was gonna get loaned out to another school. Then my school decided they wanted camps, and for 3 weeks, instead of the 2 weeks I would have done at another school. Fine. Then I was told that they would be having the classes seperated by levels. I was under the impression that this meant that all the grades would be mixed, which would cause problems as a high level 3rd grader isn't anywhere near a high 6th grader. I was also told that my classes would be nice and cozy, around 15 students a class. This I could get used to. It would put us around 60 students (15 for each of the 4 classes). Cept when the sign up sheets came back it was obvious that we had 90 students asking for camp. My co-teach fought hard to keep it at 60 students, but the vice principal, knowing so much about teaching....anything (I'm being very, very sarcastic), decided that all 90 students should get a camp. Now, 15 students a class would be wonderful, but 25 or so still is pretty damn good, so no complaints here, just wish I could get more individual time with each student. Just the tug of war nature of the whole thing that annoys me.

Well the back and forth continued, as 3 days ago, I finally learned that the classes were broken up by level, sort of. The low level class would consist of 1st and 2nd graders, the middle 3rd and 4th and so on. This brings other difficulties into play, as my high level classes, who I presumed would be high level students, are simply the oldest students. I have no idea whether these are the students that could hold a normal conversation with me in English or if they are the ones that can't write their name in English. Also, as you might have realized, I'm teaching 1st and 2nd graders.....who I've never taught before, so I have no idea what they know, if anything. This as you can imagine, makes it hard to make a decent winter camp. I just chose some activities that I think would be doable and enjoyable for the vast majority of the students, and hope they work. That's about all I can do.

My annoyance came to a head last week Friday, as I was working on finalizing my camp lesson plans that I needed to have turned in yesterday. Anyways, the vice princ. wanders in and starts chatting with the co-teach and I find out that, because there were so many 1st and 2nd graders that wanted camp, they had to break them up into individual single week groups. So instead of teaching the same kids for 3 weeks, like I do with the other kids, I teach each group for one week. The vice principal was also worried that the material would be too hard for them, so I have to make a new lesson plan just for them. I was told that it needs to be fun, with coloring, games, candy and other fun stuff. Being annoyed with the additional lesson planning I had to do at the last minute, I told the vice principal to her face, "So you want me to be a babysitter then?". Probably good she can't speak English. There was no way I was gonna come up with a 4th week of all new material (coming up with 3 weeks was hard enough), so I just simplified and dumbed down some of the other camp activities I had planned for the older kids.

The worst, however, was when she asked to inspect my lesson plans for the camps. Upon looking over the plans, she uttered, "Where is the title and key sentences?" THE FUCK ARE KEY SENTENCES?????? Yes, apparently my lesson plans were substandard and incomplete without a title for each class and several key sentences that I would teach the students. However, I was planning on having the students actually use the language, rather than having them recite several sentences multiple times, but hell, what do I know? I humored her by adding key sentences to my lesson plans, regardless of whether I have any intention of teaching them (I don't).

Now we come to meat of this post. The mandatory enrichment workshops, or whatever they call them. Now regardless of whether these workshops were going to be good or not, they got off on the wrong foot with most of the teachers, as they scheduled them for the last two days of semester, where the schools usually do some fun stuff/have parties/etc and instead placed us in stuffy auditoriums, listening to boring speeches about stuff. Strike 1. Then we found out that the first day of workshops last from 1pm - 9pm at night. Yeah, as if workshops weren't enough fun, they planned to have it run into our non-working time. No word as to whether we get overtime for it. Probably not. Now, the workshop was nice and close to my school, which was a plus, so after riding the subway for 2 stops, I was there. Having survived several workshops in the past, I came prepared with books, korean homework and my gameboy, should the speakers ramble on about nothing for multiple hours like I knew they would. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I find out that this workshop only has about 70 teachers and we would be broken up into groups of 10 for small group workshops. Booooooooooooooooooooooooo. I was really looking forward to some Phoenix Wright or Pokemon Diamond. Now, we had been given very little info on what was actually going on at this here workshop, basically just when and where to meet. Turns out the instructors had been given even less info on what to do. They were the native English speaker teachers at the university and they seemed to be just as thrilled about the whole workshop as us. According to one of the teachers, they were originally told that we would all be high school teachers (which none of us were) and that we were brand new to Korea (also not true).

Given that information (that we were high school teachers), then maybe the fact that the presentations were supposed to be on such topics as teaching presentations, reading, and writing would make more sense. As we are elementary teachers, those particular topics are completely useless, as we don't start teaching reading and writing at all until 4th grade and even then its merely a few words here and there. You can imagine the absolute absurdity of teaching 7 or 8 year olds how to do presentations. Given the instructors had no idea what exactly there were supposed to be teaching and the stupidity of the assigned subjects, most of our workshops turned into conversations pertaining to everything and anything Korea. Funny stories, frustrations with schools/coteachers, questions about Korea, etc. These candid conversations are always the best aspect and sometimes the only positive one at these kinda workshops, as its always good to know that you aren't the only one who thinks the stuff that goes on at your school is absolutely bat-shit insane. Strength in numbers, I guess.

After 4 hours of this stuff, we were treated to dinner, which was actually damn good. Actually, the candid conversations and the food are the sole positives, usually. Course, they didn't have to check attendance at dinner. I mean, it was after our workhours, so they can't really hold us after. Plus, dinner and the following traditional Korean performing arts (shudder) performance weren't even work-related, so how could your school be angry for skipping out. But, as its Korea, people got yelled at the next day by their school for "neglecting their responsibilities" or something like that. Remember, when in Korea, when somebody higher up or older than you asks you to bend over, you must promptly present your posterior without comment. They really like it if you thank them for it too.

Wanting to save myself the lecture from my school, I stuck around for the musical performance. God, I wish I wouldn't have. Now, I know Korea is super proud about their history and love to show off just how fucking scientific everything is, but at some point they need to realize that most foreigners don't like having this shit shoved down their throat. Also, they should realize that most non-Koreans find this "traditional" pretty awful and boring and terrible and did I mention awful? In fact, I'm now skeptical of anything prefaced with the word "traditional". I'm not up on the dictionary definition, but perhaps one of the definitions is "awful, mind-numbing, torturous, painful". Just a guess though.

Now, I've seen the traditional music before, so I had a sneaking suspicion that this would be just awful. A brief recap. There are some nice sounding stringed instruments, but sadly they never let them do their thing with solos. No, they have the stringed instruments play, but then they drown it out with way, way too many percussion instruments. So all you hear is banging and clashing and booming. It's just a loud mess. Then they break in with some sort of breath powered instrument that honestly sounds like a dying fawn or lamb or goat or something. I kid you not. If you slit the throat of this type of critter and then let them slowly bleed out, I guarantee the awful mewing or crying that they produce would sound exactly like this instrument. Not exactly pleasant, I know.

I assumed that this performance would be people in hanbok dancing to these awful, awful sounds. I wasn't too far off. So we arrive at the theater and I realize that we are at the Seoul Arts Center, a wonderful place, and that there is probably some sort of beautiful orchestra or symphony performance taking place at the same time we are forced to sit through this travesty. That probably made the whole thing worse, that I could probably spit and hit a musical performance I'd love to actually see. Anyways, we got to the theater 30 minutes before it started, so people found their seats and settled in and waited for the pain that would soon wash over them. I wasn't too worried, as I had my gameboy, so if shit got really bad, I'd just break it out.

So the performance starts and we are all ready off to a bad foot. The first 10 minutes consisted of a disembodied voice narrating some sort of backstory. The voice spoke in Korean and was accompanied by the textual version displaying on a screen on stage. Now, I'm no expert on the world of the stage and the arts, but I'm pretty sure that you want to start a performance by hooking and pulling in the audience to get them interested. Narration is fine and all, but to have a slow, drawn out one without a very charismatic narrator run for 10 minutes is a bad move, at least in my mind. The story was something about the crown prince going crazy and pulling some weird shit, like trying to kill his servant or something, being banished from the kingdom and living a lecherous life with performers and poor people for a year, then coming back to the kingdom to beg his father's forgiveness. Well, daddy let him back in, but he is so shamed and embarrassed by his son's behavior that to save face (I presume) he asks his son to kill himself. How? Well, he has the boy climb into a rice box and stay there for 9 days till he dies. But it all ends on a happy note, cuz his son grows up to be one of the greatest kings ever and the performance is about the dead prince's wife's 60th birthday party, put on by his really awesome son. Wait, what???? What the fuck was the point of that whole narration????? Seriously???? That story sounded kinda cool and interesting, do the play about that. Why give us that background that has absolutely no bearing on the performance. We are watching the king hold a 60th birthday party for his mom. Who cares what the hell his dad did, it has nothing to do with his mom's party 40 some years later. ARghaslghaslghlsakhgls.

At least, that's what I think the narration said, from what I could read. I don't really know, as the one screen that had English translations (a good idea) was obscured by lighting and couldn't be seen by the English teacher group (a really bad idea). That's right, they chose to put us, the only people in the audience who would need the english subtitles, in the only seats in the house that wouldn't be able to see the screen. Face, meet palm.

So the play thingy starts and its exactly what I expected: boring and loud and uncomfortable. The birthday girl is escorted out slowly by her servants, everybody else slowly walks in and sits down, there's a bunch of bowing and tea drinking, some kinda bombastic speeches (which I couldn't understand what they said), and some lousy background music accompanies the slow, stiff dancers. Seriously, I have never seen such a disconnect between the senses. Outside of maybe Mardi Gras and Carnivale, I doubt you will see more colors and flashy looking stuff then at a court ceremony like this. I mean look at hanboks (the traditional korean outfits). Hell, it looked like a rainbow exploded on stage. Now, as in the examples of Mardi Gras, Carnivale and most other things, bright colors mean vibrancy, energy, liveliness, and life. This performance was the exact opposite. Slow, stiff, lifeless, dull, and boring. Yuck.

Good thing I brought my gameboy, right? Too bad the supervisor guy from SMOE (the big wig) sat in the row directly behind me.....shit. Well, I'll just try to sleep then. No chance. At least not with that painful music playing. Then I'll just zone out and think about stuff, cuz I'm really good at that. What I didn't count on was that the performance was so uninteresting that it had paralyzed my brain. Like someone in a coma or something I was unable to do anything other than look on stage. I was able to find something interesting on the ceiling for a bit, so I just stared at that.

Now, somewhere about 30 minutes into the whole lousy show, it went from just being really f'n bad to awesomely bad and it instantly became watchable. Sadly, it didn't last for long and went back to its dull, uninteresting self soon after. What happened was that suddenly, the stage began to fill up with smoke, several very large lotus flowers were rolled out, and.........2 dancers came out dressed as Big Bird. I shit you not. Technically, they were cranes, but still. They wore striped socks up to their bird bodies, like the big fella from Sesame Street and had full body bird outfits, with the dancers heads sticking out somewhere around the lower neck area. Now, when this happened, I and most of the foreign audience who was still awake (there weren't too many, I don't think) thought they were hallucinating, and crapped their pants, or vice versa. Seriously, where did the birds come from? Straight out of left field, I guess. Now the birds started dancing, spinning, and flapping, and pecking the ground (to dig for worms, one presumes). I can't vouch for the rest of the foreign folks, but I just about started laughing at this point. The only thing stopping me was that I was too damn confused to be able to clearly tell if this was actually funny or if I was losing my mind.

Shit got more weird when the cranes danced over to the lotus flowers, tapped on them with their beaks, and then the lotus flowers opened up to reveal a Korean female dancer trapped inside. WTF??????? Now maybe I just have sex on the brain (okay, so I do), but that scene came off as a big sexual innuendo to me. You may not see it, but I've seen too many Georgia O'Keefe paintings to not think flowers look like vaginas. And the bird's beak that penetrates the flower and out comes a human? Cmon. "Sure Eric, it's all about sex. What a pervert. Next you're gonna tell me that that really awesome football statue at Camp Randall is actually a big penis." Well, now that you mention it.....

Sadly, the cranes didn't stick around and the performance quickly returned to the bowing and tea drinking and stale nature of it all. Eventually it ended. Only an hour long, but man it felt much longer. The performers all came back on stage and we gave them a round of applause. Why I'm not sure. Take for example the 60 year old mother of the King. Presumably a major character in the story, right? Well, here's what she did. She entered at the beginning, very slowly, being escorted by two servants. She sat down, with her back to the audience (she sat that way the whole time). 20 minutes in, she was helped to her feet, turned to the audience and said about 10 words to us all. She then sat down again. When the performance finished, she was slowly escorted out again. Ohhh, and throughout the performance she occasionally turned her head to acknowledge somebody talking to her. That's it. Fuck, I could have done that....easily. The musicians who played the entire time? No curtain call. The dancers who actually did something? Very minor curtain call. The lady that did nothing the whole time? The biggest curtain call. Yeah, that makes sense.

One of the other teachers I was talking with summed up the whole thing the best when he said, "Man, I really feel sorry for Korea that their culture is so stale, so stiff, so boring, so uninteresting." Now obviously that isn't true for all their culture. Hell, many of their modern cultural aspects (Starcraft, computer games, movies, and breakdancing) are all really great. But the traditional stuff? No thanks. Hopefully, Korea will realize someday that most people really don't care for the old timey stuff and will then begin promoting all the actually cool stuff about Korea. I hope.

My Restroom Difficulties

Since its the season of giving again, I'll give you all an amusing story about my restroom problems at school (sure as hell wasn't amusing to me, but you may find it entertaining). As you probably know, my school has only squat toilets, which as you might imagine, pose numerous issues for me. My first encounter was several months ago when I was at the DMZ and the results weren't very pleasant. First off, unlike the Koreans, I haven't been practiced in squatting for long periods of time. I shit you not, over here people when waiting around for something or while chatting will just squat down and stay like that for long, long periods of time. Me? Well, I can effectively squat for about 10 seconds before my knees cry out. And even if I could squat, I still haven't figured out how you wouldn't just drop your payload right into your pants around your ankles, cuz when I do squat, my legs are directly underneath my posterior. And I certainly don't want that. How do I solve the basic posture issue? I go into cocorinha, or for those of you who don't know capoeira, its a squat with one hand on the ground for support. Well, its actually closer to this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CapoeiraMeialuaDeCompasso%26QuedaDeQuatro_ST_05.jpg). See the guy on the right. This seems to work, but over time one's hand gets very uncomfortable having to support most of the bodies weight. But Eric, you say, why not put both hands on the ground? Simple, I need the other hand to make sure I don't pee all over my pants. With the posture difficulties parsed out, lets discuss some other complications. In Korea, for some idiotic god-forsaken reason, they never have toilet paper dispensers inside the stalls. No, you have to pull off however much TP you need before even starting your business. This, as you can see, is an awful, awful Catch-22. If you take too much, you feel bad about wasting TP, as nobody in their right mind will use TP torn off the roll and set next to it, as you don't know where its been. If you don't take enough, well, let's not even discuss that as the idea of it is just to horrifying. Also, my school, and it would seem many other schools, don't heat the bathroom or anything outside of the classrooms for that matter. Last year, the bathroom wasn't heated but they had heated toilet seats in the teacher's bathroom, so at least part of me was toasty. What's more difficult that trying to do your business while squatting? Doing your business in 40 degree temperatures. Or less. Lastly, in the afternoon, the school "cleans" the bathroom, meaning to say they just slop a bunch of water on the floor. That's right, you must balance on the floor with one hand and that floor is dirty and wet. I won't go into how many times I slipped and nearly fell into the narrow toilet. Sure, I wouldn't have done much harm to myself, but I would surely have prayed for death to save me from the utter shame.

All this brings us to our most harrowing adventure yet. On Thursday, as many people are want to do, I felt the need to use the restroom. No problem, I'll just wander off to the faculties. I walk into the bathroom and what do I see? No toilet paper. That's cool, no biggie. I'll just check the other boy's restrooms on the other floors (the school has 4 floors and there are mens and womens on each floor). Second floor? No TP. Third floor? No TP. Fourth floor? Still no goddamn TP. Now, I'm starting to get worried, so I checked the girls bathrooms (I just looked in as I was walking past) No TP there either, cept for the female teachers bathroom. I tried to remain calm, thinking maybe they are just gonna get refilled later in the day. I waited for several hours, checking off and on, to see if they had been refilled. No luck. Well, now I'm getting pretty desperate. Did they change to a bring your own toilet paper policy? Don't laugh, I know other teachers here in Korea that do have to bring their own. Idiotic beyond belief, but that's how Korea rolls sometimes. If they did change the policy, then somebody surely forgot to inform me. Anyways, eventually, I got desperate and, after checking to make sure everything was clear, went into the women's bathroom to retrieve some TP. Now, I obviously wanted to make this as quick as possible, seeing as how being caught in the women's bathroom would be hard to talk your way out of, even if I could speak the language and wasn't in a country where people like me (foreign white male english teachers) are openly discussed and stereotyped as sex addicts/sex fiends/perverts/pedophiles in the newspapers. Needless to say, I didn't wanna get caught. As luck would have it, I heard a door opening as I was still pulling off TP. Now, since everybody at my school is a big wuss about the weather (40 degrees is not cold people, so stop bitching!), they wouldn't leave their heated offices unless it was something important, like perhaps the call of nature. So I grabbed what TP I had, having no idea if it was enough, and got out of the bathroom. But the person leaving the office was coming from the room directly across the narrow hallway from the bathroom (meaning they were like 2 feet away). I'm screwed. Wait, they are turning around to close the door. I'm out, I'm gone, I'm free. Now, in my haste, I wasn't really sure if I had grabbed enough toilet paper, but I'd had enough shock for one day, so I just took my chances. In the end, it was cold, it was painful and it was wet, but I was finally able to go about my business. As I was telling Maria, I'm now completely ready for going to the bathroom in a third world country, cuz outside of shitting in the middle of the woods, perhaps into a hole, and having to use my hand or a leaf to wipe my ass, I'm not sure how defecating could get any more difficult and harrowing.

Now on to some other happier news, at least for me. I FINALLY GOT A BERIMBAU!!!!! It only took damn near a year. Now, my parents have still been unable to get me mine from home, so I had originally hoped to pick up one here, but because the group here cares little to none for music, they are hard to come by. One of the American guys in the group had one for sale, but it wasn't ready and I had almost no hope for it, as the wood simply wasn't loosening enough to allow it to be strung properly. Well, salvation came this week, when I was informed out of the blue that it was ready. Well, sort of. Thing still takes 2 or 3 people to string it, so I'm leaving it strung, which worries me, cuz if that thing snaps and goes.....yikes. It's super tall and I have a super short ceiling in my apt, so I have to play sitting down, but otherwise, I can't ask for more.

School is well, the same. I keep saying this, but it keeps on keeping on, with the same stuff. Winter camps are coming up, and I need to prepare 3 weeks worth of stuff. Still not sure who I'm teaching, as I've heard word that they want me to teach the 1st and 2nd graders, who I have no experience or knowledge of, as I've never taught them before, and I also hear that the classes will be broken up by levels, instead of grades, which will also be bad, as a high level 3rd grader is nowhere near a high level 6th grader in terms of ability. Guess I just have to prepare some materials and if its too hard or easy for the students, all I can do is shrug my shoulders and go "Oooooops". Not much else I can do. Also, as a nice Christmas thank you from the District of Education, I'll have to go to bullshit workshops the last two days before schools ends for winter break. Ohhh, but District of Education, I didn't get you anything...wait, no I do have something for you, its called a middle finger. Hell, you guys have been so awesome, I'll give you two, cuz I'm a giver like that. So here's my schedule for the last two days: go to school as normal and teach all my classes in the morning, then at lunch time run to wherever this stupid workshop is, then shit through stupid lectures from 1pm to 9pm. Yeah, that's right till 9pm. Then I go home and repeat the next day. Not only am I stuck at stupid lectures till that late, but I still do all my regular teaching in the morning (I only lose out on the planning, relaxing, and chatting with office mates part...you know, the good part). I also have to miss my Korean classes, which I actually like. Now, in theory, workshops would be helpful and informative, but as everyone knows, we don't live in a perfect world. Good thing I have plenty of books and a Game boy.

Now, weekend exploits. Two weekends ago, I got out and about in Seoul. To start the weekend, Jenna and I took in a weird little photo exhibit at the nearby Seoul Arts Center. It was exhibiting the works of some British photographer lady living in France. She had distorted or painted on or messed with her photos in some way so that they all looked like some manner of expressionist paintings. They were all especially sad and depressing, covering such cheery subjects as isolation, cold, winter, death, and the like. After that, we headed to some huge food expo. We sampled various teas and coffees, looked at dishes more accurately classified as art rather than food, and watched the national barista championships (it was heart pounding...). I didn't find any of the crazy expensive coffee where the bean is digested then crapped out by some tropical cat, but probably cuz its too damn expensive to give samples of. In the evening, the whole group gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner put on by a brewery in the Gangnam area. The owner was Korean-Canadian, so he understood the illusive concepts of "good beer" and "good food". Now, this is the first brewery I have ever seen in Korea. Quick recap: Drinking is an even bigger part of the culture in Korea than in America and 99% of the consumption is of 3 things, soju, Hite beer and Cass beer. And they all really, realy, really suck. Sure there are some smaller companies for beer, but they all suck too. As a result, microbrews, albeit not great, were greatly appreciated. Hell, here you give thanks for being able to find a Heineken or something and they kinda suck too. Anyways, despite not being American, the owner put on a really great Thanksgiving buffet. Sure we had to wait in line for like an hour (160 people waiting on just a few dishes would do that), but they chose to broadcast the Packers and Lions game on TV, which was awesome. And I must say that Rodgers fella looks like a decent quarterback. That's how long I've been away. The last packers game I saw, our quarterback was Brett Favre....haha. On Sunday, a few of us checked out some Science museum near Seoul. It was definitely orientated for kids with lots of interactive games and such, which was good since most of the directions and everything were in Korean, obviously. My favorite part was the awful, awful English translations on the various exhibits. Can you say babelfished? Cuz I can. Ohhhh, and I also laughed at the green living exhibit, which spent a considerable amount of time talking about how Korean homes are the most green homes ever, cuz they are made using nature's resources and coexist with nature or some bullshit. Course, on that same vein, Native American traditional housing and any other aboriginal tribe's dwellings would be even more so. Plus, nobody fucking lives in traditional housing anymore, so its kinda moot.

The next weekend saw me spending basically the whole weekend way down by Busan, in a temple stay. We got up and were on the bus bright and early at 7:30am, and were gone by 7:40am. Way, way too early on a Saturday morning. For the entire 4 hour bus ride down, we were forced to some stupid girls talk about their stupid thoughts and lives. And I mean the whole time....they never shut up, ever. Sleep was impossible, reading was impossible. All you could do was sit there, staring at the seat while your brain slowly oozed out of your ears. Finally, we arrived at the old Silla kingdom capital of Gyeongju (several hundred years ago Korea was divided between 3 kingdoms and the Silla kingdom, based around Busan in the south eventually conquered and overtook the other kingdoms and united the peninsula under one rule, thus their fame here in Korea). After some very, very Korean lunch (I'm so excited....not), we wandered around the burial mounds for the old kings and queens. There were 20 or so mounds around the area. As you can see from the pics, they weren't much to look at, as they are just 20 feet tall hills with grass grown over them. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but all I saw were a bunch of huge breasts. We got a tour guide to guide us through the one mound that was open, but he was a monster dick. He spoke super fast cuz he was in a rush or something and was super pretentious (repeatedly asking "Do you understand what I'm saying?"....ummm yeah, asshole, its our language your speaking, we understand English), then when we told him that we were in a rush and had to move on quickly, he just up and left. Wow. After that we headed to another area to stare at the milk jug looking thing that nobody knows what purpose it served. The classical city was a bit underwhelming, as there really wasn't much remaining from the kingdom. Sure, the area was pretty, but I can take pics of mountains and hills almost anywhere in Korea, I wanted to see some impressive architecture or something. Soon afterward we headed on to our temple we would be staying at. Now, this was my second temple stay and it was much, much different from the previous temple stay. The other temple felt like a much more authentic experience as there were only 20 or so of us and we actually all prayed in the same quarters as the monks. This temple was very nice though, especially for those people that wanted to do a temple stay, but not really leave the comforts of home. We stayed in a big separate building built just for temple stayers with showers and everything. The other temple stay? It had a shower house that was a little walk away. They also had a really, really nice gymnasium area at this new temple as these Buddhists practice the martial art, Seonmudo. The old temple stay??? Not so much. Our schedule at the temple stay was very much filled. We arrived just in time for dinner at 5:30pm, then over to the gymnasium for evening prayers, a video about seonmudo, then a 90 minute seonmudo workout. Now, by this point, we had begun to become really, really annoyed with some of the other group members, as they complained when they found out that Buddhists are vegetarian (seriously, you didn't fucking know that???? dumbasses), they complained about how hard the seonmudo workout was (it was basically yoga, sure its a martial art but its much more about balance and holding kicks and moving with grace), they complained about the cold, etc. Not really sure why they came. The seonmudo exercise would probably have been hard for me before I started capoeira, but with all that flexibility practice behind me, it didn't pose much of an issue. I did find all the groaning and moaning quite funny though. I thought seonmudo was cool, but at the end of the day, there is reason why I do capoeira and never any of the other asian martial arts: cuz they are so dull, slow and boring at times. The peace and serenity and self reflection is great and all, but I need something lively, something with energy. Seonmudo is not that.

Sunday morning came way, way too early too. Despite going to bed at 10pm, 4:30am came much too soon. The group groggily wandered up to the morning prayers and after an hour of groggily bowing and mumbling along with the Korean chants, we were given time to wander around the premises before breakfast. We wandered up to the dangerous looking prayer spots. Sometimes there was a rope railing, sometimes there wasn't. Sometimes there was a rope ladder for ascending, sometimes there was just rocks. However, there was always a very, very steep fall to the ground below and there was always a gorgeous view to make it all worth it. We meditated and watched the sun rise over the mountains. This part of the Buddhist lifestyle I could get used to. The food and sleep schedule? Not as much. I would die if I was forced to survive like that long term. Well, maybe not die, but I would be a walking zombie at least. 6 hours of sleep a night and with that diet sorely lacking in any type of food for energy (I wasn't seeing too much in the way of carbohydrates unless they go crazy and have an Italian night every tuesday or something and I just don't know about it), I would be in a constant haze of fatigue. Plus, Korean monk portions are not Eric Wallin portions. Ohhh, but I can have another bowl of rice if I'm hungry? I can't fucking wait. After leaving the temple we headed to the ocean for some pictures, but not for too long as it was only about 30 degrees and the wind was around 20 mph or so. Along the way, we stopped off at some other, smaller buddhist temples. The temple architecture looked the same every time, which is also the same as all the old Korean temples and palaces, so needless to say, that got kinda boring. The actual alters to Buddha were always different and always impressive. Hell, they carved into cave walls and into cliff faces at times. However, I got a question for ya Buddhism. For a religion based on the ideas of living simply and not being extravagent, you sure do have a lot of extravagant and gaudy idols to worship to. Just saying. That comes off a little, well, hypocritical. With all our temple visits finished, we boarded the bus and were subjected to another 4 hours of absolute nonsense from the girls behind us. Hate to break it to ya girls, but I don't give two shits about your hair or what you do to it. So shut the fuck up. Thank you.

Pics: See album "Buddhism for a Day"