A Visit to a Temple

We decided that we wanted to go to a temple on Friday, so Cynthia did some research with my AMAZING Frommer's guide book and we found a temple we thought would not be so far away. She told some of her friends, who teach at other schools, our plan and we decided to meet up with Leah and go to Yeoju to visit the Temple...Now, I am so thankful that I lived in Chicago for a semester in college and familarized myself with a subway system...Seoul's system is quite a bit bigger but it is the same idea...so I feel comfortable on the subway...buses however are a whole different story...especially buses to different cities!

Here we are with our bus tickets...we are pretty pleased with ourselves and are praying that we are getting on a bus that will actually take us where we want to go...

This temple is the only riverside temple in Korea. It is beautiful and very peaceful. Some of the scenery by the river reminded me of the boundary waters and made me miss my 3105ers!!!

This is the side of the main part of the temple. They were in the middle of meditation and mantras so we were able to listen to them the whole time we were there it was very interesting. Cynthia majored in religion in college so she was telling us some interesting facts.

This was my favorite building of the temple...I liked all the colors of the flags and the writing I have no idea what it says...but it sure is pretty. We were here while the ladies were having a choir practice of sorts. It was beautiful.

We also stumbled upon a hub for pottery...These jars reminded me of the verse in 2 Cor. 4...it made me smile. I thought the pottery was amazing. I have more pictures posted on facebook so if you are interested you should check them out.

All in all it was a highly successful trip. It was about an hour and a half bus ride and then we took a taxi to the temple. At first taxi driver didn't really understand us and just took us to where he thought we wanted to go...a big outlet mall...and then when we finally got him to take us to the right place it was going to be about a $30 cab ride....but he was gracious and reset the meter for us and so we only had to pay $3. That was really nice because we were all sweating it! We couldn't find a taxi to take us back to the bus terminal so we walked...but we didn't actually know where it was. Thank God for Frommer's I found the word bus terminal in the book and asked some random men where it was and they were able to point us in the right direction...then the man went and got his son to tell us in English! I really like that the kids can usually speak enough English to help us out! It was a fun day!

Holly