remember when I went to Korea?

day 7 (wherein we wore sandals to hike a mountain)

We were told we were going to a Buddhist temple. I thought “Okay, a building with a divine presence. I’ll wear sandals.” 

fml!

We learned too late that the temple was a dozen or so building-sized divinities standing, sitting, and lounging about on mountain with hundreds and hundreds of other amazing things to see. You can’t really tell from that video, but each of those steps was about two-feet tall, and nearly the end of us. We followed a path up, and noticed stacks of prayer stones, which people were drawn to taking photos of. 

The next cool thing was an area with lanterns and bells which I got very poor video of, because I was out of breath from that steep prayer stone path. 

We continued up to a bell which, inscribed on its outside somewhere, contained the names of Jason’s mom and her brothers. 

did he say buddha farm?

Yes he did.

Countless golden Buddhas larger than an average man. And you can see the beginning of the other half in the video. Also, those shelves behind the Buddhas? More Buddhas. As if to fill in the cracks between Buddhas with more Buddhas.

We saw more Buddhas

and more buddhas

Then we left.

Driving through korea, you’ll see the mounded graves everywhere in the hillsides. Our next destination was to one of these. In particular, Jason’s Grandpa’s. We had meat and fruit to offer, as well as soju and cigarettes. It was all very somber, and I felt like a stranger who didn’t really belong there, so Jason’s mom introduced me, and I totally lost it.

For lunch we went to eat fish soup at a restaurant which uses an adorable sign like this:

Behind the wholesome fisherman, some cutesy little fishies inviting us to eat them. We didn’t think that they might have bones like this:

Angler? Whale? we never figured it out.

Our last stop was apparently a traditional-style village where movies and tv shows are filmed. 

this happened:

twice!