Splendid Saturday

This Saturday is one of the best Saturdays I have experienced here in Seoul and I know many more are to come. I met Casey and a few of her friends for an afternoon visit to a Buddhist Temple, tea shop and some shopping. Jamie a friend of a friend of Casey’s has been teaching here for the past nine months and has a better sense of the city and offered to take us to Jogyessa Temple. The architecture and color scheme of the temple is similar to the other palaces and temples here in Seoul and I’m guessing Korea. Never the less, it is absolutely beautiful and I never get tired of taking photos of all the colors and intricate drawings on the temple. The inside was just as beautiful if not more then the outside. I think one of the best temples I have ever seen. There were several people mostly older “wiser” women inside praying and we grabbed ourselves cushions and found an empty floor space off on the side. Sitting, soaking up the décor and watching people pray, a little old women came up to us and gave us another cushion and motioned to us to start praying. Feeling uncomfortable and out of place, I did three or four bows out of respect and then proceeded to grab my stuff to leave. Before leaving we walked around to the front to see the three big beautiful gold Buddha statues in the front and all the offerings people brought. Shortly after, a monk came in and started to chant. Wooed in by his chanting we grabbed another cushion and just soaked up the peaceful atmosphere the temple had and prayed. With all the prayer lanterns hanging from the ceiling, Buddha sitting so peacefully and the monk chanting an overwhelming feeling of peacefulness filled my body. It was a great feeling especially since it is so hard to feel a sense of peacefulness in this loud and busy city.

An hour had passed and we finally left the temple and headed towards one of Anguk’s popular shopping streets which is just down the road from the Temple. This street is full of art galleries, street sellers and one amazing yet hidden tea shop. Jamie took us to this tea shop and we indulged in plum tea, pear tea and honey cakes. Everything was amazing, my plum tea was so sweet and delicious I couldn’t get enough. Fortunately to our benefit the staff brought over complimentary jasmine tea. The jasmine flours were sitting in the small glass tea pot and as Jamie pored the hot water in to the teapot the flowers began to bloom. It was absolutely beautiful watching this happen. The jasmine tea was not sweet and mild in flavor in comparison to our fruity teas but still just as amazing. Apparently this tea shop is a popular spot for many of the monks to pop in for a relaxing cup of tea. After this experience I can see why and will most definitely be returning quite frequently to this tea shop.

Feeling sweet and warm from the tea we roamed the streets popping into the various art galleries and looking at all the great stuff the street sellers were selling. Do expect your gifts to come from this shopping street because the stuff here is awesome. Amongst the great gift items are food stands with interesting foods, most of them looking delicious and amazing. After I get my first pay check I plan to return and stop at each of the food stands sampling the various foods so that I can better acquaint myself with Korean street food. One stand took rock hard honey and stretched it out to several hundreds of threads as they mixed it with corn starch and flour. Hopefully you can get a sense of what I am saying from the pictures but either case it was fascinating to watch. To end our splendid day we stumbled upon some traditional Koreans drumming and dancing in this open cemented gathering space. Not sure why still, but it was a neat thing to see and plus there is a nice tile wall right there as well.