The Temple Tour went into OT today.  Gaeamsa [Gay-ahm-sa] was the one temple, located less than 20 kilometers southeast of Buan.

I removed the month of dust off the seat, pumped the tires to 35psi, and took off for Gaeamsa.

It wasn’t a beautiful day. It was overcast and the air was damp. (Yep, I could have been in Oregon today.) I almost reached the temple when freezing rain started to fall. But, I looked up at the sky and yelled a few words. It took about an hour, but the sky eventually heard, understood my English, and stopped it’s nastiness.

It was me and three other visitors upon arrival. Five minutes later they left and it was just me. (okay, there was a dog barking, but he tired out quickly.) Peaceful.

I’ve never really given a lot of attention to the painted patterns on the temples. Today, I did. Today, I was alone. Today I saw the motifs on the exterior walls and the patterns of greens, reds, and blues covering the underside of the eaves. Amazing.

I stopped at the gift shop. I left with a 20 dollar box of incense. I don’t know what happened, but  20 dollars of incense didn’t seem unreasonable. It smelled so good! In the shop, the cashier lady saw me looking at some bamboo salts. We tried to communicate. The only Korean I understood was “Here, eat this.”  I tried some salt with her. The single crystal was potent. Sucking on it brought out a sulfur taste. I must of not shown any sort of disgust because she gave me a small packet of salt to take. “Service!”. OK!!

It’s the Lunar New Years, a big holiday for many in Korea. It’s a time when families get together,  elders give advice and money to the younger gens, and guys go out drinking with their hometown friends. With our families a few thousand miles away, I and fellow Buanite teacher-friend, Linda visited some Buddhist temples instead. We decided on Naejangsan, about a twenty minute intercity bus ride south of Buan.

It was a byooteefull day. The sky dumped several inches of snow the night before. The temp was somewhere around freezing which is just where i like it for these hiking activities.  The sunlight pierced through some high clouds while at the same time a few lower clouds were spitting out some flurries. It was cool.

We planned on doing a Triple Temple Tour but we only managed to pull off a Two Temple Tour. Which…was perfectly fine with me because, of course, ‘Two’ still begins with a ‘T’ ^^. Our detour happened just after hitting up Temple Two. We saw a sign pointing up a mountain side and the innate human desire to summit was too much to resist.

The switchbacks on this trail were rare. The trail went straight up the mountain side. There were many steps, stairs, and more steps, and an occasional knotted rope to make it humanly possible.

I’m discovering that its really not the temples I like so much, its what surrounds the temples. The temples are located in beautiful areas, at the confluence of valleys, perched under the protections of staggered stones, or resting along mountain sides. Nature surrounds.  I don’t know anything about the Buddhist faith and maybe these statements I’m making are obvious, but these places are escapes and i imagine, real escapes a 1000 years ago.

Mal and I started the day in search of a bike lock. Instead, we found exercise equipment along the Jeonju River, a Hanok village, a Ginkgo tree, and some Misirang Imsil Jeejuh Pijuh (Cheese Pizza).

Despite the lack of snow and ticket buying havoc, I had a nice weekend at Muju Resort with my friends. Hey, I snowboarded in Korea!!

I should have taken a picture of the lift and rental options displayed at the purchasing counter. There were way too many combos in my opinion. 3 Minutes or less should be all it takes to make the transaction, but there were a few issues. I had the option of renting equipment by the hour. “Hmmmm….do i want my board and boots between 12:30 and 4:30, 6:30 and 10:00, 10-12, 8:30 12:30, or really early morning, or a combo of these, and wait…what about the two day rental packages? And…and…and the lift ticket?” It’s the same deal. If the tickets and rental were cheap than i wouldn’t have really cared, but they were freakishly expensive. I, as well as my friends wanted to make the best choice. If not we could have easily lost 50 bucks. Unfortunately, upon arriving to the ticket counter,  we didn’t  know exactly what we wanted.  We also hit the language barrier trying to communicate with the counter peeps. A three minute transaction turned into an half an hour event. But we had our a tickets, boards, and skis at the end of it and we were happy.

Now, for the second part of this post. I have my third cold in the last 3 months. This might be a record. I will to verify this with my mom. I suspect it’s because I am around hundreds of elementary students and exposed to copious viruses. Perhaps it’s the some Korean strains my body just can’t handle. I am suspicious of this because these colds are a little different than the ones I’m used to.  It’s like a cold in the US, except the sore throat and runny nose and amped up while the coughing is reduced. Hmmm… I think I will might need to wear one of the these fun Korean masks for the rest of the school year.

It’s often like this. There are only 5 native English peeps (excluding the many  Filipino wives) in the town of Buan and we stand out. I say “hi” or “hello” about a thousand times a day, of which half to people I’ve never met. It is cute. I think sometimes i’m going to get tired of it, but it hasn’t annoyed me yet. Well, except perhaps on bad days. But on those days any cheerful talk is annoying.