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Wow, I haven't blogged since 4th April so here's some updates on what I've been up to.
Teaching over the past few weeks has involved some up's and downs. My brief experiment in putting the middle school students desks in a horse shoe shape ended Friday as I found students seem to work better when their desks are in normal rows....a disappointing conclusion. However, I am going to try moving my elementary after school classes into a horse shoe arrangement because the way their desks are set out doesn't seem to work either. I have got stricter on my middle school student the past two weeks setting out new rules and keeping kids who turn up late behind, as well as sending kids out of class if they hit each other or use bad words. It seems to have improved their behaviour a little. Some of my classes have gone really well, including an "open class" where parents came in to watch, however other classes have gone really bad and I was in tears after one class. Overall I think the teaching is getting a bit better than it was and I'm learning a lot.
As I mentioned in my previous blog, I planned to go to an Amethyst cavern on Easter Sunday. I walked there (a 10 mile round trip) and on the way I discovered a place called Jakgwaechon stream, which is one of the 12 scenic sites of Ulsan. It means I have now visited 2 of the 12 (just 10 to go). At the cavern I had a boat ride into the cave, then went into the rest of the cave where there were many different displays ranging from amethysts to ancient eqypt, south american tribes to dinosaurs. It was really interesting though. Afterwards I walked up behind the cavern where there was a beautiful Buddhist temple set into caves. It has to be the most amazing religious place I have been in.
The following weekend I went to Tongdosa temple on the advice of my co-teacher. It was very good advice. Most Korean temples are set in mountains in very beautiful surroundings. This particular temple is one of the three "jewel temples" of Korea (in Buddhism, the three jewels refer to the Buddha, the Dharma - his teachings, and the Sangha - the community of Buddhists). This temple represented the jewel of the buddha because it included some of his literal remains brought over from China (or so its claimed) including a piece of his head and robe. In Buddhism sacred relics or texts are buried under stone Pagoda's and there was a very large one in which his remains were apparently kept. I also visited the Tongdosa Temple Museum where I saw many old buddhist paintings and artifacts.
The next day I met up with friends to go to the "foreigners market", an indoor market where foreigners make home made goodies and sell them. I bought brownies, a fajita and carrot cake....so so nice! Then we went for a long trek around Ulsan Grand Park and managed to visit a zoo and an indoor butterfly garden. It was a lovely day out.
One of my top "to do's" when I came to Korea was something called the Temple Stay. This involves staying at a Buddhist monastery for 24 hours and learning about the Korean version of Buddhism. I managed to do this last weekend (18th/ 19th April). It was a brilliant experience. I went to a temple called Beomeosa which was about an hour bus journey south. There were 15 of us staying there for the weekend. We began by having a Buddhist ceremony where they taught us how to bow properly (a half bow, followed by three full prostrations and ending with a half bow), and we took vow of the five precepts (the Buddhist commands for lay people i.e. don't kill any living thing, don't steal, don't lie, don't misuse sex, don't drink alcohol or take drugs) for the duration of our stay. After that we had a tour around the temple and I learned a lot about what the different buildings, artwork, statues and pillars meant. Korean Buddhism is called Seon (Korean version of Zen) and is part of the Mahayana version of Buddhism. That means that it's not just the Buddha who is considered important but also beings called "Bodhisattva's" which are beings who have achieved enlightenment but vow not to enter Nirvana until all beings are saved. Many Buddhists pray to these beings for their help with various aspects of life and historically Buddhism usually took over previous religions, it simply adopted their gods and turned them into Bodhisattva's (like Christianity did with naming its saints after local deities). Other interesting things I learned were that the Buddha is seen as sitting in his "heaven" land on the top of a mountain called Mt Sumeru and the Buddhist temple is set out to reflect this cosmology. There are a variety of gates you go through to get to the main Buddha's hall. These include the "one pillar gate" which represents changing your mind's perspective towards life and the gate of the four guardians (4 beings who carry symbols of truth and defend the buddha's realm). Harkening back to the days of Korean Shamanism, there is also a special hall in each temple dedicated to the Sanshin (mountain spirit), often depicted as an old man with a tiger, who is seen as the spirit of the mountain and protector of the people nearby. I now feel like I can understand Korean temples much better and can act appropriately when I visit other ones. After the tour was a traditional Buddhist ceremony which involved bowing and listening to the monks chanting and then it was dinner time. While Korea seems to be obsessed with eating meat and has no concept of vegetarianism, their temples are different as all food there is vegetarian. It was a nice change. We didn't get to experience a full on eating ceremony with the monks which was a pity, but they did give us temple food and we experience some of the rules like eating in silence and not starting or clearing away until everyone was ready. The evening saw us take part in making prayer beads. This involved bowing full prostrations 108 times and after each bow threading a bead. It was a little hard on my knees but I enjoyed it and found it very meditative and relaxing mentally. Bed was 9pm and we were up again at 5am. At 5.30 we had a short morning meditation session, breakfast and then a hike up a mountain to a hermitage. It was raining so it wasn't the nicest of walks but once at the top the clouds cleared a little to reveal some lovely views of the valley below. The temple stay concluded with tea with a monk. I don't like English tea but I'm finding that I like a lot of the teas over here - especially the burdock tea we had there.
This weekend was Big Day South, an arts, music and culture festival seeking to showcase the best of Korean and foreigner culture. It also happened to be the same weekend as the Ulsan contemporary arts weekend. This made for a fantastic day out. We arrived about midday and saw a dance and heard some poetry, then we went out for lunch and wandered along a street called "culture street" where there were stalls, grafitti, live music and a theatrical performance. After that I went around some of the local galleries - I didn't think much of the "contemporary art" in them but one gallery in particular had some stunning paintings of street vendors and I was very impressed with that. At 4.30pm I went to the Royal Anchor pub where they had a series of local bands, primarily Korean and covering a variety of music genres, performing. Some were brilliant, others not so much but it was a lot of fun and great to experience music from a different culture. Finally we ended the night with a Noraebang (Karaoke) session. In Korea and China, Karaoke is a big past time and many people go to Noraebang's (Karaoke rooms) with friends to drink beer and soju, sing badly and eat snack foods. It was a good night and I eventually got home about 3.30am.
Today I decided I needed a day off to relax and so I have been doing very little. See you next time.
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