Sunday with Buddha

It's Sunday night and my apartment feels like an armpit. If you don't know what an armpit feels like, it's really humid and smells like clothes that won't dry. The smell is from my clothes that won't dry because it's humid, I don't have a dryer, and my laundry room is attached to my bedroom/living room/whatever room where I'm sitting now is supposed to be. That's my laundry room on the left with all the boxes on the floor that are now soaking wet due to sideways rain. I have also discovered that most mornings Korea smells like a wet dog. This is not the most attractive scent to associate with an entire country.

There's never that much to do on Sunday night but I always feel like the day is full. It didn't rain today and for Korea's three week rainy season, that is miraculous. Although, like I said before, all the rain makes Korea one giant armpit of nasty stickiness that refuses to leave your skin. SO I added to the grossness of it all by working up a sweat through climbing an obscene amount of stairs to see the largest sitting Buddha in Asia. In this picture you can't even see the end of the stairs...but it was a lot. To add to the experience, there were speakers in the woods next to the stairs that were playing Buddhist prayers. So I was climbing this massive amount of stairs, by myself, in sandals, in the sticky humidity listening to a creeper voice thanking Buddha for rain and love. It was an experience, to be sure.

I will say though, when I got to the top, it was pretty worth it.

The backdrop of the mountain against this huge Buddha and a temple just below was really pretty. It was also quiet and smelled clean, a rare thing in Korea. I think that's why I like temples here, they are generally away from the city so they are quiet and smell nice.
I found the nicest monk, too. I guess that all monks are probably really kind, but this one pointed out things he thought were pretty that I should take pictures of. I appreciated it, took the pictures and held back laughing in case he took it the wrong way. He even found a really nice bench for me to sit on.

This is a picture of the flower he wanted me to take a picture of. He beckoned me after he showed me where the water was (to be fair I was sweating and probably looked like I needed water, so I appreciated him pointing that out to me). Then, he pointed to this flower and said, "Ippoyo. Handpone" which means, "Beautiful. Cell phone." The cell phone part meaning he wanted me to take a picture of it. I thought it was a bit odd, bit was amused so I took a picture. I was about to walk away when he beckoned me again from inside what looked like a classroom. He wanted to show me this little balcony where you could see trees and a little waterfall and there was a bench to sit on. THEN he walked down to the end of the balcony and asked me to follow him and showed me where there was this tree growing peaches. He was super proud of them. Or maybe they were plums...either way, he was so glad to show me the pretty things he saw in nature and I really appreciated him doing that even though there was a language barrier.

Here we see my favorite monk taking a very important phone call in the classroom/learning center/church ish place. I honestly have no idea what it was, but it was right outside the Buddha. I was also very amused by him talking on a cell phone. I guess I still have the stereotype monk meditating day and night. I don't really think about monks on cell phones.

As you can tell, I have discovered adding pictures to my blog and thoroughly enjoyed intertwining the story of my temple adventure with the pics. I'm sure there will be more to come.