Staring out the day I checked out of my hotel made my way with my group to Soul station, where we would be taking a bullet train down south. The train was comfy and was going fast, around 180 mph. After a few stops, we got out and then took another bus to a Buddhist temple. It was cool to see Korea outside of Seoul. For the first days in Korea, it was all tall skyscrapers, masses of people, and stalls. But out of the cities, it was very quiet with lots of houses and farm land. On this trip we ate very traditional Korean food, which was smalla nd to be honest not my favorite. Though after a long travel, we finally made it to where we will be staying for the day, Gogul Temple.
At the temple, it was not just our group; there others students studying abroad, people on a normal vacation, and local Koreans. They first gave us temple clothes to wear and showed us our rooms I was in a room with 4 others, and we had no beds, only floor mats. After some downtime, we made our way up the hill to the training school, where we had a teacher teach us practices which were basically just stretches and kicks.
As a Christian, this place did feel kind of wrong. I was in a temple stay with a different religion. I know you can technically be both Buddhist and Christian, but I only have one idol in my mind, and that is Jesus Christ. I will say that I did not like this trip to the temple; however, it was interesting to learn what Buddhism is and what Buddhists do.
After practice, I tried to go to bed, but sleeping on hard mats was hard and uncomfortable, and I did not get a good night’s sleep. There was a 5 am mediation which we were supposed to go to, but of the 22 group members, only 6 went.
Lunch and dinner at the temple were strictly vegan. I eat meat every single day, and it is my favorite food. To be honest, traditional vegan Korean food is not my favorite, so for both lunch and dinner, I mostly just had rice.
My stay at the temple felt long, and it was definitely something I would never do again. However, every other part of this Korea study abroad trip has been a blast, and I’m having so much fun and learning a lot.