Hwang Jin Yi in Insadong :) (pretentious? sure.)

I made a friend at the Geumsansa Temple Stay who likes tea just as much as I do (but knows more) and invited me out in Insadong to visit the small market streets and have a nice tea in his favorite tea shop (the only tea shop in Insadong that is non-smoking). We walked around and I - sadly - found EXACTLY the kind of Korean traditional jade hairpins I want (starting from $350 and up....).

Before getting to the market street we passed by a Buddhist temple and went for lunch in a Korean restaurant in one of the back streets. I love that when you go around with people who grew up around, they know of the nicest places even when they are hidden amongst the weirdest neighbourhoods.

I became quite infatuated with Insadong. Tons of hand-made crafts, jewelry, nice food, nice tea shops .... and photo studios. 

After I had tea with my friend Heather joined us and we walked around. Then we found this amazing photo studio and decided HELL YEAH, we were totally going to get dressed up as Korean princess and gisaeng....:) the hell with pride. We had such a good time!!!!!

I bought a stamp with my Korean name on it :) shaped in my Chinese Sign :) so pretty! <3

Seaside

My coworker Stormy (yup, that's her real name) had had this boat trip planned for a long time, trip planned by the American Air Force in Korea (her hubby being in the Air Force) and it got reported to last weekend. She invited me so I joined. In the end she was more than happy she thought of inviting me, because there were no other girls. Was just us with a bunch of guys. 

We got there and the tide was so far away that the boat was not really tempting so the fishing trip turned into a beach trip. Was fun all the same, good chilling times in the sun, swimming in the still-too-cold-to-swim-into seaside and doing Roman Candle fights. 

Good times.

Geumsansa - Temple Stay

Heather found this Temple Stay through Adventure Korea in Joellaebug-do, in Geumsansa Temple and we decided to join in. The idea of chilling in a temple, away from time, away form everything, was too tempting to let go. Especially in my case, where work had been crazy for two weeks non-stop since the merge... So here we found ourselves, in a 4 hour bus-ride, towards an unknown destination, to chill at a temple for 2 days, one night.

An amazing thing of that temple stay was that feeling of "coolness" of being able to go in the places that said "Do not enter" and stay in the temple after the visiting hours. Our sleeping quarters were right besides the monks', and we woke up at the same time as them to do many of the things they usually would do. Obviously, everything was tainted by the fact that we were not Koreans, and most didn't know anything about Buddhism. I felt very lucky to have had studied Buddhism in McGill, as it made every explanation more simple to me. That and the fact that I understood Korean. The translations were not really that good so I really felt special, to be able to understand the exact words the monks were telling us.

Sunday morning we woke up ar 3AM to go in the main temple to bow to Buddha and at 3:40 we were sent back to the dormitories til 5. Our guide said, half kidding, "sleep some more, unless you want to come with me and do the 108 full bows". People took it as a joke and just went to sleep some more. I, for my part, knew that I would hate my life if I had only an hour more of sleep and had to wake up again at five, so I decided to walk around in the big inner court, having my mind set on meditating. As I walked around however, I saw our guide lighting up the hall and realized that he hadn't been kidding when he said we could do the bows. 

How many times would I wake up at 3 in a temple, and need to stay awake til 5, I asked myself. 

Then I made up my mind: I'd go. 

So I make those 108 prosternations. Bowed to the Buddha, as my legs were giving away and the only thing that allowed me to stand up was the combined forces of my knees leaning against each other.

Later on, during the day, I realized my mistake. It was already in the program to do the 108 full bows, as we made our 108 beads bracelet. 

Result?

I did it twice in a day.

Yup. On Monday I couldn't walk anymore.

In my life I have never felt like I really deserved a piece of jewelry as much as I feel I deserve this one. I literally made with "la sueur de mon front" as Quebecers would put it.