My First Colourfull Fall

It’s getting cold in the early mornings and evenings but my first fall experience in Korea is something great. With great I mean to see the transformation of nature that turns into a colorful ocean of leaves. This tree rich mountain area has become beautiful and the lovely sun shines almost every day the last 6 weeks. Less great was the lately evening training we had a few weeks ago. One crazy junior monk put out his T-shirt at night training which to be happen outside around 19:30 with a 7 degree temperature. By doing this I pointed my finger towards my ear and circled around. When our teacher for that night, Drill Monk (I call him this way because he trains in a kind of military style) saw this everybody had to put off their shirts and do some fine flying kick exercise in combination with some relay racing. I tried to explain that I did some finger stretching yoga, unfortunately he ignored me (off course he did). The funny thing was that he also puts out his shirt (to show off ^^) and we looked like a naked bunch of mixed up mental monkeys in the open wild jumping, crawling and running in the moistures grass field. Luckily the training was a kind of intensive so you wouldn’t notice the cold too much. I hope the veggies and ginseng powder thee I consume every day stay me out of any fanatic flu’s or a snotty sniffer.

Actually this is only one of the many trainings we had (2 times a day 6 times a week). Sometimes it’s much crazier. The heaviest ones are the so called “Hell Hill Trainings”. These will start from the bottom of the temple area and go up all to the top in all kind of different forms. Like walk on our hands while the other is carrying the feet, or jump over each other’s back, walk on our hands and feet (like a gorilla) forward and backward, do flying kicks (forward, sideward and backwards) over the rest of the group while sitting on their knees, jump your way up with one leg while the other leg is on the shoulder of a partner, sprint up a very steep part or walk like a duck. If we are lucky we do also the 108 stairs where you have to do the same stuff on a steep stairway.

Sometimes the stairs is being used for some more creativity like doing pushups every three steps you make or just walking down it with your hands and feet. It’s really fun here and one (or maybe most) of the teacher’s enjoy people suffering (so we can do more bows! Tell you later about the bows). Actually I do like these kinds of trainings and think their funny. One time an assistant teacher told me that I wasn’t training hard enough because I was laughing. This is of course crazy because if you lose fun in it, I think it’s getting too serious. So if this specific person reads my blog… if you want to have a stairway contest I will defeat you and will laugh my ass off anyways (loose or win)! :P

Time is flying here and in a way that is a good sign. If you don’t enjoy a stay time runs slow. It’s almost my fourth month and I didn’t really have time to update my blog, login to Facebook a lot or try to keep up with my e-mail too much. From the last day I wrote at my blog a new volunteer arrived. A nice girl named Heather from Canada with a big bunch of red orange curled hair and some sweet freckles. She lived a few years in Seoul and worked as an English teacher. Besides that she is pretty active in the Sunmudo Art and has her first degree. We can get along just fine and I am happy that she is here. She will stay a little longer then me so I am not deserted with just some Korean jackass juveniles (which are really funny though). We divide our work and I take care of the office work and orientation at Monday, Wednesday, Friday and switch of the Sundays. We are really flexible to each other and in this way I feel lucky I am not fed up with all the work that has to be done here.

As the time had passed I got some more duties. One of them is the orientation (telling about the temple, Sunmudo and how to bow) and the other is guiding the 108 bows. This is like more than half an hour bowing and hitting on a split bamboo stick. The bowing is a kind of delicate and has a deeper meaning. It has to do with human suffering. Buddhists believe that by bowing every day 108 times their sufferings will be cleared and finally will reach enlightenment. I also read that it’s good for your health and joints. For my experience till now I think it is just killing my knees and figured out that counting (even in Dutch) 108 times in combination with bowing can be pretty difficult, especially when you are still sleepy.

A lot happens here at Golgulsa. This is caused by the diversity of all people that live here and the long and short stay visitors of this notorious temple. Actually I met so many people and experienced a lot of weird and hilarious situations these last months that I can write a book about it. All have their story and funny, crazy, sad or ridiculous specific characters. I will describe some favorites in short.
The King of tiny terror is Kim Young. He is a 16 year old boy who can manipulate certain people pretty well and can be very social and humoristic. He likes to swear in English and it sounds very funny. Some examples are motherfather (motherfucker), sun of a beach, asswell (asshole) and buttwikkel (buttlicker). KY was kicked off school and end up for a 3 month stay in this temple. Here he didn’t improve his behavior any better. He likes to smoke and tried to skip a lot of daily templeprogram. Because in the past some bad incidents happened they placed CCTV around certain areas. One of these places is the sesimdang. This traditional temple building is used by longer templestay people where I and also KY sleep (luckily not in the same room!). Sesimdang latterly means; clean our body and mind. Unfortunately this meaning doesn’t help change the attitude of most teenagers here.
Thanks to CCTV KY got busted on mistreating a roommate. When the poor guy left to his parents they found out. He had blue marks all over his body and we were shocked by this fact. After this discovery got to the surface KY could choose, report to the police or become a junior monk for the rest of his stay (3 weeks). This means wake up even earlier, do a lot of work (just become a slave), making many bows every morning, a lot of restrictions like don’t go out on Sundays and off course get a free monk haircut. Finally he chose for the monk option and after that it was very peaceful at the sesimdang. The first period we saw him around with a bold head, nice brown monk(ey) suit and a tab on his chest with the text “I may not talk” we teased him a bit but he could laugh about that. After a week he didn’t laugh that hard anymore. It was really tough for him and he wanted to get out 1 week before his final date. The senior monks here are not stupid and discovered his little escape plan. The punishment was seeable for everybody and to my opinion reasonable. If you agree on a 3 week stay as junior monk because you beat somebody up you can expect some karma back if you want to escape your responsibilities.

Another funny guy is Seok. The first time I saw him I was a bit scared of him. He weighs over 120 kilo has the building of a sumo wrestler and always looks (is) hungry. The reason why he’s here is because he wants to lose weight and prepare for the military service he has to enter coming year. When we had to go up the hill one of the first times for the morning chanting I scared my ass off. He was just sitting in the middle of the road where it was completely dark and almost run into him. A few meters on approaching him he said “good morning” into my face when he was taking one of his many breaks towards the upper chanting room. After that specific morning I just walked on the side paths to avoid these scary unpredictable moments and to avoid any heart attacks.
Actually Seok is a really good guy if you get to know him some better. He also likes to play with animals and bugs and sometimes he accidentally kills them. I think the animals don’t see it as playing and must also scare their ass of when for example a  frog butt get squeezed to see the bubble at his troth.
Ginahn, just came back from the army and is a university student in Architecture. He speaks some Basic English and likes to talk with me to improve his conversation skill. Unfortunately the topics are not that high leveled, we like to call each other all kind of dirty names and mostly say stuff like “Oh no, Oh my God and What the ….. We also have some serious conversations about women and what kind of alcohol we like. The reason why he entered the temple was because he needed some time to think about his life in a way and get more discipline. The last days we talked he said to me he was more motivated for his study after 1 month temple stay and knew now that life as a student will be easier after experience temple life. Waking up was not his strongest and because he smokes and drink(ed) a lot during the military service his body had to adapt to temple features. He left the temple last week but we became Golgulsa buddy’s and we will meet later to finish our deep conversations.

Chan Lee is my translating savior at this temple and also fixed my audio driver problem which was caused by a virus, thank you Chan! :) He lived for 2 years in US and his English is better than half of the French nation (or maybe the whole). He is here for a three month stay because he got a skin disease that just appeared last year. Chan is really easy going and he seems rather intelligent and mature for his age (only 19). He is only a few cm’s taller than me but he eats like 2 times his length. All the people are complaining because if you are too late for a meal he ate most of it. Even though he seems rather intelligent, he mostly reacts a kind of slowly. So sometimes he have to do some translation and I think half of the time he did not get the message and the Master has to tell it again. Probably it’s because he has a kind of long term cold and his brain is full of snort (the yellow liquid soft stuff in your nose). But I am happy he is here and can talk some ‘normal’ English.
One last person for this moment is my first and dearest roommate Theo who already left me a while ago… happily! For normal standards you would think he is a kind of awkward and actually when time passed I figured he really is… but even though he has his weird characteristics, I like him. He has a kind of closed personality and doesn’t talk too much. But being his roommate for like 7 weeks I get to know him a bit better. Like he never cleaned the room in that time, likes to walk around naked and his feet smell like cheap French cheese. The positive thing is that he loves Naruto and other Animation so that gave me more insight of his real mind, which makes it much more understandable and bearable of course^^. Besides that he can be really childish when it comes to imitate fighting scenes with all kind of funny sounds and voices. He is pretty good at Sunmudo and has a second degree in Taekwondo. He lived here for more than 1.5 year and I really admire his discipline and love for this Martial Art and Temple. The more I stay here the better I get to understand the people here. I realize now why he loves this temple so much and why it’s so special. He will come back in January.

So the people described are only a few steady templestay people which are a kind of close to me. Besides them there a lot more temple stay people that I really like and had great fun with. Also the Korean volunteers, teachers, monks and masters are all very nice.

Master Boorim is the multiman at the temple here. He is the right wing of the Head Master and is also the one that can give me punishment if I misbehave or break temple rules. The stupid thing is that I signed a contract for that. Young Bob Sunim (his pseudonym) is a charismatic personality and has a very calm sweet voice. I think his voice works a kind of hypnotizing and talks you into another spiritual dimension and let you do things you normally never would dream of. For example it’s not normal for me to wake up every morning at 04:00. In Netherlands I would ask like at least 300 euro a week for this kind of nonsense. He has the same height as me and smiles a lot and looks very peaceful. But all this is just deceivable, because his moves are like samurai pizza cat and he likes to hit people with a split bamboo stick when not obedient. If his mood is bad we have to do the Hell Hill, so he can feed some energy by seeing us suffer.

Probably you think oh my God, Milan is having a hard time there! Actually I have, I miss my mother and my bed!! Partly joking, all is pretty easy going and even Master Boorim is very nice to me. He has to be otherwise I will talk bad about him to all foreign visitors so he will get a bad notification on the evaluation survey and then he has to deal with BIG Master Monk. So in this way I have some power. I think I have to take advantage of this manipulating influence soon. I really need some more rest and get a good 10 hour sleep.

Happily I don’t have to do the 108 bows every day anymore, so I can update my blog a bit, write some stuff for friends and personal use, answer e-mail and do some updates for web design demands. My Korean study goes with ups and downs. To admit, more downs then ups. My teacher left this week and I only finished maybe 6 units of the first Chapter… pathetic. But with only 1 hour a day, half of the week cancelations because of the sleep catch ups, you can’t do too much. Hopefully with the winter period is getting quieter and get some more time to do some serious studying. But I just got some information that this will not be the case, while I have to teach English to a group of 25 elementary school children for one month! Yes, we never get bored at Golgulsa :).

Last for now… If you think poor Milan is totally locked in the temple, it isn’t true. We sometimes have very nice daytrips and do go out for a nice lunch once a while. After the Martial Art Festival we went for an unlimited buffet lunch where we stuffed ourselves with all that we can’t have at the temple. The good thing about eating almost every day the same is that you are going to appreciate food more. So that one time a week meat or fish taste better than normal. In this way I also think that you get more conscious about what food does to you. Finally after eating meat you feel your body gets tired easily and has to recover in a slight way because it’s all used to the veggies. But on the other hand it has become a kind of habit to poison myself with all kind of serious delicious snacks Korea has like chocopies, potato chips, chocolate bars and other bother your body stuff.
Besides food trips, Koreans love mountain walks, so do monks. Gyeongju is one of the most beautiful nature areas in Korea, so in this case I really love it here. A few weeks ago we had this wonderful trip to Namsan with the entire group where we had a nice picnic with a clear blue sky and amazing variety of fall view.

This blogpart is just a small percentage of what I experience here. There is happening a lot more which caused by all the different Korean and foreign personalities that live here or just visit us. This off course gives also an extra dimension to all what’s happening and in this way you stay social, busy, excited and active every day! Each morning is the start of a surprising and special outcome. Some more than others, but that’s makes it all more interesting…

See you at the next update!