Daewonsa - Spring

Last Saturday, a group of friends and I went back to Daewonsa , a temple that I would really like to be able to see at least once in each season, as so much of the experience is about the landscape of the area.



It is cherry blossom season, and last week the bloos were at their peak. We grabbed a bus out of Suncheon to Boseong, then from Boseong to Daewonsa. Once we got out there, we realized that the temple we usually had almost all to ourselves was PACKED with people out to "enjoy the cherry blossoms" and that there was in fact a flower festival at the temple that day. The bus, which usually drops off in the parking lot of the museum kicked us off several miles up the road. With a combination of walking and hitchhiking*, we made our way up the cherry tree lined road to a restaurant that made bibimbap with flowers.

At one point, Nicola and Melisa got into a discussion about how this must be what angels eat for lunch, too.

After exploring the temples and saying hello to all our favorite places, we went down to one of the lotus ponds for a concert. First were the hippies singing with guitars, then the very hip young men and a woman with microphones and what amounted to a karaoke machine.

At one point, an incredibly old woman (who was smoking in public!! quite shocking here) got up to dance, waving her walking stick in the air and slamming her feet into the ground. It may have been one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my whole life. This picture doesn't do it justice:


And later Nicola and Melisa made the middle-aged women in fancy shoes dance on the side of the pond:


After the concert, we eventually realized that the bus wasn't going to come and pick us up, and we started to walk/hitchhike* back to the main road. A woman alone in an SUV picked up all six of us and not only took us to the road, but drove us all the way to the nearest bus station, where we were able to grab a bus that was just about to leave. The timing was perfect.

This, unfortunately, is when fortune stopped shining so brightly on me (as indicated a few posts ago) but the DAY part of Saturday was amazing.

* all references to hitchhiking should be read with the full knowledge that we were on our way too/from a TEMPLE, there were 6 of us, and this is Korea.

There were other pictures I wanted to post, but I can't figure out how to get flickr to let me steal the images without downloading and uploading the files to my own account. If I figure out how to do so, there will be more added eventually.