A Saturday To Remember

I woke up on Saturday with little intention of having a culturally shocking day. It was 10am and as usual, I was tired from a long week of travelling and working at the school. Being around kids proves how energetic one really is. Regardless, I was expecting to meet Seung at 1pm to go prepare for a housewarming party with the few people I know and he was to take me grocery shopping. I mustered up the energy to get out of bed, eat, shower and dress myself in preparation for his arrival.

As 1pm strikes, promptly Seung knocks on the door and is accompanied by a friend of his (also named Seung, but I will just refer to him as Chris to avoid confusion). Chris’s English is not quite at the conversational level yet, but he was still able to ask me the basic, ‘what is your name and where are you from?’ type questions. He was shorter than Seung, about 5’5”, with long wavy black hair to the top of his shoulders, jeans and a t-shirt. I invited them inside, but they insisted that we get going.

We used Chris’s car, a small compact deal, to drive to Sangju’s E-mart on the outskirts of the city. E-mart is the Korean version of Wal-Mart, except maybe larger. It has food, electronics, hardware and a mall sized food court, all stacked on top of each other in floors divided by department. It was here where we bought some beer and chips for my party, but my adventure was just beginning.

From E-mart we drove outside the city limits, past rice paddies and cabbage patches, until we came upon a large museum, specifically for bicycles. Inside was nothing to speak of. It was one large room that contained a timeline of the progression of the bicycle. Whoop-de-doo, it was boring. Outside, they had bikes that could be taken at one’s leisure to ride around on the trails surrounding the museum, so we each took a bike and began a trek up a very steep road.

We had set off on a two mile bike ride, up a hill that took us through farms of Sangju’s number one cash crop: the disgusting persimmon. I say disgusting, because I have had a persimmon. They look like bright orange tomatoes and have to consistency of a goopy slime. A ripe persimmon is what we would consider a rotten fruit, but they love them here. I, obviously, do not. The persimmon farms and processing huts were, however, an amazing sight. Tens of thousands of fruits dangled in warehouses by strings in the drying process, while workers sliced and boxed the finished product.

Soon, however, we rode far beyond that of the persimmon farm. The two miles of uphill biking seemed to go on for 25 minutes, which when considering the effort needed to move for 25 minutes, was a lot. Finally, finally, we reached a point where we had to abandon our bikes. We had rode far up a mountain, deep into the woods and what stood in front of me was still unknown, but what was to be found, needed to be found on foot.

After another quarter mile over a small marble bridge and a rocky footpath, I found myself looking upward at the gates to an ancient Buddhist monastery. Built thousands of years ago, this shrine was isolated from civilization and technology and used to study Buddhism in complete peace. We entered through the massive gate into a perfectly manicured courtyard surrounded by three buildings, which all looked identical. From where we stood at the entrance, a small stone path led to each of them. A monk, dressed in the whitest robes, pulled a rickshaw filled with vegetables to the house on the right. Without saying a word, we all bowed to him and he bowed back. He was taking food to the other monks in their sleeping quarters.

We were allowed to enter the building directly in front of me. First, Seung instructed me to take my shoes off before entering and to leave my coat outside. Many giant golden statues of a sleeping Buddha were scattered throughout building. This is their place of prayer. At the foot of the biggest Buddha in the center of the room, was a padded floor mat that only the monks were permitted to kneel on during prayer. To the left of this Buddha was a bowl filled with the sticks from thousands of used incense. Without speaking, Seung handed me an incense to light and place in the ashes of the others. This may have been the most peaceful moment of my life. The air was clean and smelled fresh, as it does after a cool summer rain. And all the while we experienced complete silence.

The third and final building was used as a place of study for the monks. We were not permitted inside this ancient monolith; however, if it were anything like the temple for prayer, I can assume it was a very comfortable place to study.

Unfortunately, and I am killing myself for this, I did not have the foresight to bring my camera to E-mart, because I had no idea I was going to be visiting anything so breathtaking. However, this was not the end of my Saturday adventure. I was told we were going to visit other shrines scattered around the outlying mountains. I was not dumb enough this time to not stop and get my camera. The rest of my day can be told through pictures.

Our next stop was the shrine to a famous fallen Korean General. The gate was very similar in architecture to the entrance of the Buddhist monastery, but much smaller.

Inside the first building (above middle), hung a portrait of the General along with his sword. On either side was a glass case containing ancient Chinese calligraphy. There wasn't much to read or look at, however, the size and number of buildings constructed to honor this hero spoke volumes about how well respected he was. The above right shows Seung and Chris walking up the steps to the building containing his tomb. Within we saw his final resting place: a brick tomb. Here we lit another incense to honor his memory and signed a guestbook showing our presence.

The picture on the right is a very large tourist map of Sangju-si (the city) and the outlying road system in the rest of Sangju. The city is only a very small part of the total area of within the province.

Our next destination was a lookout tower on a nearby mountain. Here we found many families hiking up to the tower to see the unreal landscape of Korea. It was a truly a pastoral moment. However, first, we had to hike up the mountain. This was no easy task. We had to climb a few hundred steps, which took about 15 minutes.

Our efforts were greatly rewarded:

Please use the link on the right side of my blog to see the rest of the photos I took on Saturday. I am in a few of those to prove I was actually there. The captions in the photos tell a story in themselves, so you can follow the in-betweens of my little Saturday excursion there.

The next update will certainly be of the school, the kids and my apartment. And one final thought before I end this very long post: I met my first Westerner here in a bar later that day. She is a teacher at a nearby school along with two others. I haven't met them yet, but we exchanged contact information, so hopefully I will soon have fluent English speaking friends.