I am deathly ill and I still have one class to teach today. I really hate Mondays—I have a heavy workload and weekend catchup to do. And apparently I’m allergic to weekends—this is the fourth one in a row I’ve gotten sick, and it’s worse than ever. I have no patience and I just want to lie in a pile and die.
School is a little stressful for me these days. Mom is helping, but it’s still hard. My co-teacher keeps piling on work and work and more work—she’s the eternal bearer of bad news. Today she informed me that I must help her at our stupid school store every Wednesday (I am getting paid a little extra, but I think I’d be getting that money for the teachers’ workshop, anyway) AND the kindergarten class is going to stay huge. They want to learn English, I’m told. Well, now no one will learn, because it’s impossible to teach 27 squirming bodies at once, no matter how many incompetent teachers I have to help me. I’m so upset about this. I do not want to start my Thursdays with a huge frustrating headache, but, as usual, I have no voice. It’s another case of quality sacrificed for ceremony, another example of the overemphasis placed on reports and frivolities instead of actual teaching. I had a dream last night about this very thing, and I was so angry and frustrated I woke up sobbing. I dreamed that my teaching was being so consistently undermined by pomp and outside influences that I quit, and no one cared. Their only concern was the MBC film crew coming that day and how they could best show off the school. And it’s not too far off—I often feel, especially lately, that I am not respected or appreciated at all as a person here, but only as a bragging point—now everyone can proudly say they have a native-speaking teacher, and nobody seems overly concerned with content or quality at all. It’s beyond frustrating. On Friday, my co-teacher forced me to carry on an activity, despite the fact that the students’ interest was waning and I wanted to move on, because she wanted to get pictures of the kids interacting with the Americans. Basically, she wanted to sacrifice teaching for false modeling. I was so angry with her—not because it’s a huge deal, but because it just goes to show how skewed the priorities in this school are. Instead of teaching, they’d rather just have me model in pictures. It is ridiculous. Maybe I will follow in the footsteps of my dream self after all, but if I do, I certainly won’t cry!
This weekend was fun, despite my sickness. We didn’t do as much as I’d planned, but we were able to spend a lot of time at Jogyesan and its two temples, and we definitely learned a lot about Buddhism throughout the course of our temple stay.
On Friday, we wandered the Nonsan market before catching a train south to Suncheon. The Nonsan market was a lot more friendly than the Daejeon one—there were far fewer people, and much more room to walk and wander. Plus, Mom and Beast were more used to the market atmosphere. I am glad they’re growing to love the markets like I do—they’re so much fun, and such a big part of my Korean life! I spend essentially all my free time purchasing snacks in various markets around the country…now I have people to share all this food with! I introduced them to Korean stationary stores, red bean fish, and tiny tomatoes. It was fun. And the train ride was the first for the both of them, so that was a good time, too. I love the Jeollanamdo scenery…I think if I did it all over again, I’d live there. It’s so beautiful and the people are so friendly and easy to understand! I never have communication issues here.
Upon arrival, we caught a taxi to the bay, walked the boardwalk among the reeds, and climbed a small mountain to view the sea. It’s a beautiful place—I visited last year—and I was glad to discover it was so close and easy to take the girls. Unfortunately, we ran into difficulties on the return journey—the taxis had all disappeared, and the girl at the bus stop was less than helpful. But the bus driver made a special stop directly in front of the train station for us and we found Janaki and Colleen right away, so all was well.
We capped off a good first day of travel with mushroom shabu shabu—one of my favorite meals, and one I hadn’t yet shared with my guests. We feasted on mushroom-only soup, numerous delicious side dishes, a little bokumbap, and some noodles for only 7000. Man, it’s gonna be tough to return home, where restaurant meals are expensive, do not come with free refills, and require tipping. I may stay in Korea for the food alone.
Day two dawned with overcast skies and drizzles. Not good for a day in the woods, but still, we soldiered on. We went to Seonamsa Temple in Jogyesan Provincial Park to look around and then hike onward to Songgwangsa Temple and our templestay program. Seonamsa was gorgeous, in a secret garden sort of way—a cluster of buildings smothered in flowers. Evidently it is famed for its traditional outhouse, a two-story structure with holes to squat over, but I didn’t find it particularly remarkable. Only smelly. We warmed up with a cup of tea each at the temple teahouse, then hit the trail. It was much more difficult than I thought it would be, and much much more difficult than Mom or Bridget hoped it would be, but we made it, finally, by mid-afternoon. We stopped mid-way for a boribap lunch and it was definitely the most fabulous mid-mountain meal I’ve ever had. We had a huge spread of mountain vegetables and barley rice, finished off with hot nurunji (burnt rice water).I have no idea how they get all this food in here—from what I could tell, the place was accessible only by trail—but that just made it all the better. I like to think it’s all local, in that case. Yum!
Once we reached Songgwangsa, we joined the templestay program, which consisted of the five of us, a couple from Seoul, two ladies from Busan, and a girl from Chuncheon. We ate monk bibimbap at five and then watched the evening chanting ceremony—first monks banging the huge drum at the temple’s entrance, then chanting in the main temple. I couldn’t really follow the words, even though they were romanized in my book, but it was magical to hear. There’s something about men’s voices chanting in unison, reverberating in a room, that is just mesmerizing. We closed the day with a tea ceremony. I’m not sure what kind of tea we had, or what the talk consisted of—my Korean Buddhist vocabulary essentially consists of the word for Buddha and nothing else—but it was pleasant to sit on the warm undol floor (the weather had become almost winter chilly), sipping tea in elegant cups and watching this kind monk explain doctrine. He had really beautiful hands. I think it must be a monk prerequisite.
Sunday morning, we woke a little after three for the morning chanting. I hadn’t slept well at all and it was not pleasant starting the day so early, but again, it was an enchanting experience, waking to wild drums and soul-soothing chanting. We ended the ceremony with the requisite 108 bows and even though I am in stair-climbing shape, and even though I did them the easy way, helping myself to my feet with my hands, my legs are still sore today. Those monks must have steely legs! Later we practiced meditation and bowing for a bit, then ate a wonderful ddeok guk/bi bim bap breakfast. That morning, we rested, then took a temple tour, ate once more, then finally took our leave around one. I’d planned to take Beast and Mom to the Boseong tea fields, but there just wasn’t time with the temple stay. I’m glad we stayed, though—I learned a lot about Buddhism in those two days. I’m intrigued with the idea of staying at a temple for a while—I’d love to really dive into an exploration of spirituality, without any distractions or interruptions.