happy chuseok everyone!!! yesturday was korea's biggest holiday-- chuseok-- which, from what i understand, means the festival of the harvest and celebrating the ancestors. for an american living here, it means 5 beautiful days of no school. so i got myself tickets on one of the fastest trains in the world, and headed across the country to the southeast coast and visited a couple dordt friends teaching in busan, which many of you may know as pusan (it's spelled with a korean "b", but b and p are pretty interchangeable here it seems.) we had a fabulous time and 
i fell in love with the ocean, mountains, islands, curvy roads, and lack of sidewalks that i experienced in this cultural little coastal city. we spent monday hiking in the rain at bameosa, discovering budhist temples throughout the trees and rocks, and climbing lots of rocks while holding our umbrellas, and laughing about the rain and our lack of view from the top of the mountain (and by lack of view i mean a big white sheet of nothingness...), and we even had a good long night of rook like all good dordt grads would do. it was nice to be around familiar people. justin and adam made very good hosts and gave me all the peanut butter and jelly and lethal tap water my heart could desire. i put up some of favorite pictures of the weekend, but here's the link to more: http://dordt.facebook.com
budhist monks (they're called monks, right? if they're not, i'm sorry if my ignorance is disrespectful...). on the right, a woman reading through a window. on the left, men bowed respectfully during a ceremony.
on the left, bamboo. on the right, the confucius symbol of peace of serenity. does it look like another symbol from history? the nazi swastika perhaps? if that was your guess, you are right. the nazi stole the confucian symbol of peace and inverted it to symbolize war and chaos and hatred.
me and my umbrella.
inside one of many many rooms with budha and other ceremonial stuff. we got to hear bits of several ceremonies taking place--a lot of chanting, drum banging, yoga-ish bowing and meditating. it was a very interesting experience. the energy of the entire mountain was oozing peacefulness and reverence.
4 comments:
Mmm. I wish I could have seen them. Wow.
I am sure it was a very peaceful experience. One of the most peaceful persons I have known was my Buddhist professor in college (who was a Buddhist), Oh and yes Buddhist monks are called monks, or rather Buddhism has monks like Christianity, and you probably saw Buddhist monks in the Buddhist temples.
Post a Comment