We’ve made it to Pohang!
Today was an earlier start, and at the temple I woke up at 5:00 in the morning. Typically, this is on brand, but I had actually gotten much more sleep compared to the last couple of days (going to bed at maybe 8:40, 9:00 in the evening? Not terrible). A couple of us got dressed, got ready, and then walked up to the temple for morning meditation. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling great had a a pretty bad headache, so I decided it was better to wait out the morning meditation and participated in the walking meditation held afterwards, as I didn’t want to miss more activities.
My headache didn’t really let up the entire morning, but I tried to power through it and ate breakfast (quietly—to my knowledge, in Buddhism, they view eating as another form of meditation, so they say if you must talk you must do it quietly. I didn’t have a whole lot to say due to, y’know… my headache. So, not an issue!). Afterwards, I waited for Dr. Yun to finish breakfast as he was planning on taking a walk to see the Buddha statue carved into the mountains. I thought a walk would be nice, and I was right—the weather was gorgeous and the views were spectacular.
I didn’t make it to the top of the section with the Buddha statue specifically—the stairs were steep and my headache persisting and dehydration was not a great mix with a long walk up the stairs. But I took a lot of photos of the area I did make it too (only a little bit further down from the statue) and from a section a bit disconnected from the main statue that we walked too as well.
When walking down the mountain, a couple of us stopped by a shop selling some goods. I bought a pair of pants. They’re a good purchase for the summer and a nice, light color that will look good at the beach trip I’m taking that I’ll (hopefully) be going on later in June/July.
Afterwards, we participated in another sunmudo session. I really enjoy these sessions—in a way, they remind me of when I did yoga in high school, which I actually had really enjoyed. After the session, we had tea with the grandmaster monk. He answered a couple of questions some people had about the temple (it’s about 1500 years old!) and told us a bit about himself (he’s a grandmaster in taekwondo and sunmudo and has gone to Emory to give talks and California for taekwondo tournaments, if I’m remembering correctly. Pretty cool!).
We then got ready to pack up and start our trek to Pohang. On our way, we stopped by the Gyeongju tombs from the Silla dynasty. They’re these large, man-made mountains designed to be tombs—sort of like the pyramids, in its own way. We then were given free-time to walk the near by area a bit, so Emma and I wandered off to look at the streets (no souvenirs) and ended up bumping back into Dr. Yun, who bought us these 10 won coin shaped breads (bread and mozzarella). It was actually pretty good, and Emma filmed a video of me imitating a guy on TikTok who went to Japan, bought a similarly shaped bread (but 10 yen instead of won), and closed his eyes before pulling back from the bite anticipating this long cheese pull and nothing had happened.
We then proceeded to follow Dr. Yun to go get bingsu! I’ve only ever had it in the States, and apparently Dr. Yun really likes this chain, so Emma and I split this strawberry and yogurt one. It was really nice, especially since it was kind of warm out. We then walked around some more before hopping back onto the bus and finishing off our trip to the hotel.
I ended the day by taking a little walk. It’s been a harder day compared to the rest, and I wasn’t in the mood for dinner, but Kali was nice enough to walk to the nearby market with me to clear my head and because I saw there were some tteok stands at the market. I got what I believe is called kkultteok, which is circularly, bite-sized shaped, and has honey/sesame seeds on the inside. Kali and I ate some while walking to the hotel before going up to Emma’s room to offer her some too—we all really enjoyed it. I like tteok, in general, to say the least; my mom knows me well enough to know I love eating it and that if I could, I would eat an entire platter (I didn’t, though! Hah!), but these were nicer than the ones in the States. Those are good, and they’re soft, but the ones I got were cheaper and were like 10 times softer. They definitely had the upper hand, and I won’t be shocked if I end up going back for more tomorrow.
I’m winding down the day by relaxing and taking a break. My body needs to rest, it seems, so might as well listen to it before our big visit to POSTECH, tomorrow!
Today’s title is named after the song Dream Bus by Day6, which actually has a completely different meaning, but it’s the only fitting song title that worked with how this day went (Where I napped on the bus the entire time).
