Temple Stay... the short version

Saturday after a few stops and starts I got on the road to Haiensa (yes we ended up someplace different than where I thought we were going... but hey this was a more important temple anyways). After taxi, subway, and then bus, we made it up to the start of the hike up to the temple. There were 7 of us 6 expats and 1 Korean English teacher at the Uni where Jody works. We stopped at one of the little resturants at the bottom for a quick lunch of Korean pizza, potato pancake, and I can't remember what the Korean name for it is but Acorn tofu.
Then we hiked up while trying not to take too long since we were a little late to the temple. We got there signed in, paid our 30,000won and were handed our outfits for the weekend. Then off we went to change and get ready for whatever it was to come. So we headed into one of the smaller temples and were instructed for about 3 hours on how to eat with the Baru and how to sit, bow, walk, etc. All of this was in Korean. We'd been told it was going to be in English... but no such luck. So most of whatever wisdom the Monk was passing on passed over my head. Dinner was pretty good and yet again I don't know what I ate, just that it was veggitarian. I'm thinking roots, mushrooms, and cabbage for the most part along with bean sprout soup. Then we had 15 minuntes to clean up and get back for evening prayers. I gave up most of that time to watch the evening drumming... which was facinating and I shot a little video of it before we had to go.
This was probably one of the highlights of the first night for me... because we did them in the main temple. So while it was more Stand, sit , Kneel. It was in a beautiful setting with incense wafteing around and the monks chanting. Afterward we did a walking mediation around a pagoda for awhile... admitedly my main thought was "Holy crap! There are stars in Korea!" Living in the city I can't see them most of the time so it was nice to have a couple minutes to look at them while walking. Then it was honestly 2 hours of boring hell. We got to have a "chat" with the monk... still no translator so... 2 hours of Korean plus we could tell there were some jokes pointed at us since we couldn't understand them.
Finally 9pm and lights out. But sleeping on mats on a really hot floor, with people snoring, and all was not the best nights sleep. Plus morning was coming way too early.
2:30am Lights ON! The gongs were ringing and it was time to get up and be ready for morning prayers at 3am. So up again and back up some scary stairs in the dark and time for the 108 bows. (sounds easier than it is) Then a 1/2 hour meditation in a little temple, where I got fussed at cause Jody and I put our prayer mats down too loud.
Afterwards we had a half hour to chill so since dawn was breaking I took a few pictures and a 10minute nap. Then off to breakfast, dried sweet seaweed, rice, potato noodle, and carrot soup, and I think some more cabbage. Then another 15 to brush teeth and such then back to the meeting spot. Where we got a great surprise!!! AN ENGLISH SPEAKING MONK!!!! Yeah! He made the whole weekend. He had gone to school in the US for High School and college. The tour he gave us of Haiensa was neat, he basicly had us argue and talk about buddist thought and told us a few things about why Haiensa is so famous.
After that we kind of decided to take off... we were tired and couldn't see 2 hours of the other monk again touring us though the museum, (which we had heard from people was all in Korean and not that good.) The plan was to sneak off, but we got caught. So yet another scolding by the monk. This one I managed to doge most of cause I was just going along with the group since otherwise I didn't know how to get back to Daegu. When we finally managed to get out of the temple, we took some nice pictures on the way downhill. Caught the bus and made it back to Daegu, where I faced a new challange... saying NO to my co-teacher... we'll see how that plays out today at work now.