Hmmmph

I had a ton of photos and movies I was going to post today but something happened to my memory card and I lost everything. So I will have to tell you about it instead.

On Thursday I went with some of the teachers to watch and listen to traditional Korean music. They played on these instruments that looked like slide guitars but bigger. I was the only whitey there and everyone kept asking me if I was bored. I am guess they thought that since half of the crowd was asleep during much of the performance. I really enjoyed it and even when they started playing "Twist and Shout" I felt a little excited...at least until the Koreans started clapping to the "rhythm". Every show I have been to the Koreans clap way too fast. They even did it for "Let it Be". I really wish I still had the video, but you will just have to imagine.

On Friday I took a 3 hour bus ride to see friends and get ready for a big night at a Buddhist temple. We spent the night in Yosu and had a great dinner and some horrible beer at a bar that was showing Waylon Jennings, Mark Nophler (sp?), and Emmy Lou Harris (among others) performing on ACL. Good times. Then we headed to what was the most expensive and dirtiest noraibang I have ever been to.

The next mornign we hopped on a bus for the 2 hour journey to Kwanju, where we were then to get on another bus that would take us to the temple. Problem was that the bus didn't stop where we were told that it would and nobody seemed to have heard of the temple when we asked. So after standing around in the rain for an hour we gave up and headed for some good food and a nap.

The evening turned out well and we did some decidedly unBuddhist things. The most memorable event was seeing all the fat (250+ lbs) Canadian girls walking into the bar and hearing Koreans saying "blah blah meigook, blah blah meigook". "Meigook" means American. Every time a Korean sees a white person they assume that person is American when in fact they are probably Canadian (lots of em here).

We were all somewhat happy the next day that we didn't do the temple with the waking up at 4:30 am and then having to do 108 bows which are more like very very deep curtsies. I was able to meditate on the 5 hour bus ride home instead while watching the second season of "Rome".