Today we had a little more traveling, and this time we are headed out of Seoul and into a new city! We started the day off by getting to the train station, and got on the train to Busan. We weren’t going to Busan, but getting off at an earlier stop at Gyeongju. One thing that I noticed as the train began to move is that there are a lot of buildings in the area that look exactly the same. They look like copy-and-paste apartment buildings and have big building numbers painted onto the side. Some of them even have company logos on the side, so I can only assume that they are company buildings.

At our newest location, Gyeongju, we are doing a temple stay. We are staying at the Golgusa temple, which is a Buddhist temple that is over 1,500 years old. We are staying for one night and 2 half days, so for the time we are there, they gave us little outfits to wear. The outfit was an orange vest, which goes over a t-shirt, and brown pants. The outfit wasn’t too bad looking, and it was really comfortable to wear. For the duration of our stay, we got to do a couple of different activities, and our first one included a Sunmodo training class, which is a Buddhist martial art. We got to learn some Sunmudo moves, which was cool to see the difference between that and Taekwondo, which I did in high school. To me, Sunmodo seemed a lot more focused on demonstrating focus rather than actual fighting moves. After training, we completed the 108 prostrations which are 108 different ways to live life according to buddhists. It includes bowing, kneeling, praying, and standing up again 108 different times. We only did about 60 of them until it was time for dinner.

In a Buddhist temple, the monks typically eat in silence, and they also do not eat any meat at the temple. In my opinion, the meal was pretty good, even without meat. Our final activity of the day was watching a performance at the temple. They had traditional singing, a fan dance, and a Sunmodo demonstration. It was a really beautiful performance, and I found it really cool to see traditional forms of art from Korea. Once the performance was over, it was already late, so we pretty much went to bed right after. At the temple, the monks go to bed at 9 pm, which is very early compared to my normal 12 am – 1 am. It was nice, though, to go to bed early for once, especially since I will have to wake up early tomorrow. Until next time!