This morning we were told that a loud bell would wake us up for an optional meditation session with the monks. I told myself that if I woke up for the bell, I would go, and didn’t set an alarm. I never heard any loud bell, and neither did anyone in my room, so we didn’t go and instead went to breakfast at 6:30. While dinner yesterday was interesting, it wasn’t really my thing. I liked breakfast a lot more, mostly just because they had bananas. After breakfast, we made a long trek up one of the hills to see the Buddha carved into one of the cliffs. The hill was pretty steep with a lot of stairs but the area was very cool. The view was very nice at the top and reminded me of when I would go hiking in highschool.
Following the hike, I went back to pack up all of my clothes and make sure I was ready to leave, and we had one more training session, with similar stretching and yoga as yesterday. Afterwards, we were invited to tea time with the monks. Everyonoe sat down in a room with the head monk who gave an interesting information about the history of the temple, buddhism, and answered any other questions that anyone had. Once we were done, we got on a bus and headed straight to lunch on the way to Pohang. After being at a vegan temple for the past day and a half, I was very excited to eat meat again. I ordered a beef dish with lots of other sides and enjoyed it.
After lunch we stopped to quickly look at some Silla tombs. There was a number of old artifacts. We were also given free time to walk around the nearby area. After walking around, we headed to our hotel in Pohang and were dismissed for the rest of the day.