Hwa-eom-sa Temple

I didn't know quite what to expect at the temple stay. All I had really heard about was the 108 bows. Here is a little overview of our stay. We arrived at the temple in the afternoon and were given our temple clothes and led to our rooms where we would sleep. Heather and I had the room on the right, the guys on the left. Our views from both doors (there was also a door in the back) were beautiful! Before getting a tour of the temple by a monk we were taught how to bow. You start at a standing position with your hands together like in the picture. Then you kneel down and put your forehead to the ground and kind of raise your hands up and down right beside your head, then you get up again to your feet. That is one. Usually when a Buddhist enters a temple they do three of these (from what I remember learning).
Here we are on our tour of the place. Our monk was really funny but also very difficult to understand. Maybe I understood 30% of what he said, the rest of the time I just nodded and laughed when he did. When monks walk around the temple they usually hold their hands like we are holding them (we were also taught this). I guess I had forgotten and liked the pockets a bit more.
Here is the inside of the biggest temple. This is where we attended the "worship services" that Mark wrote about a few posts before. This is also where we did our 108 bows at 3:30 in the morning. (yes, it was painful to walk for days) Notice the woman in the background taking our picture...Mark also wrote about this in the post. It felt really strange to have so many people staring at us...crazyness. It was such a beautiful day and I couldn't get enough of the cherry blossoms.

After our tour of the temple we met this monk who is sitting behind the table. He meditated with us. We all sat for 20 minutes cross legged on the ground with our hands in our laps and just mediated. I was really tired and really struggled to stay awake...I was also thinking about my legs which were sore from sitting cross legged for so long. This monk told us how he meditated for 13 hours a day (with breaks of course) for three years straight! I can't imagine.

Later in the evening we had tea with him and had the chance to ask questions. Our friend Kwang Kyu who is sitting to the monk's left side was our great translator (he also planned the whole trip for us all :)). It was really interesting to learn more about Buddhism and about life as a monk.

At 9pm it time for bed....I can't remember the last time I went to bed this early! The reason they go to bed so early is because they get up every day at 3am! At 3:30 we attended a "worship service." All the "worship services" were really short, maybe 10 or 15 minutes. The monks and other Buddhists would sing/chant two songs and do a couple of bows in the middle of the songs and then that was it. After the early morning services most of the people left the temple but our group stayed with the monk from the night before who led us in doing the 108 bows.

Since breakfast was only at 6am most of us temple stayers went back to bed for an hour. Here is a picture of our breakfast. It was actually my first time to have a korean breakfast. This is actually not my plate (I didn't take this picture)...my plate was mostly rice and some tofu, I just couldn't handle all of that kimchi for breakfast.

After breakfast we went on a walk through the forest with our guide and at the stream we meditated again, this time only about 5 minutes. It was such a beautiful setting.
After handing back our temple clothes we took a group shot. The two women on the very right were kind of our guides who told us what to do when. They were really kind.

It was such an interesting and surreal experience. I feel like I could say a lot more about it but I'll stop there for now.