Boseong

On Thursday and Friday, we had a teachers' workshop thingymajiggy in Boseong, which is known for its green tea. That is what this above picture is of. Yup yup! Surrounded by fields of green tea! I love it! Anyhoo, the workshop thingy made up two days; the first day was classes, about 4 of them, and then afterwards there was an activity of your choosing - either a hot seat tournament or a pub quiz. I opted for the pub quiz because I didn't know what the hot seat tournament would entail. In the end, I found out it was a taboo style game, which could've been fun. The classes I took were pretty much useless. I learned from people who haven't been teaching for long, or if they have, it didn't show. Not to say that the workshop was all a waste, I did found some things valuable. During the first day, we had a break time of about 1.5 hours and Maggie and I decided to go bike riding...tandem bike riding. I sat in the back because of the front seat was too high for me and the back seat was too low for her, haha. We were riding through the rice paddy fields and we were going rather fast at one point and my foot slipped off the pedal and it kept spinning and hitting the back of my leg. At first, I was like, "Ow, ow!" but I just kept riding, it was OK. Then after several seconds, I was like, we have to stop, this hurts way too much. I looked at my leg and my skin was falling off and there was a little blood. It was horrible, but I was able to ride back to our accommodations. By the time I got there, it was pretty painful, but we had a class to go to. We weren't late though because it started late. Then we had to go to a FAQ session, which was alright. I saw our coordinator and I asked if there was a nurse because I didn't want my injury to get infected. Then I got led to the lobby and there was a first aid kit and a couple ladies helped me disinfect it and they put some sort of gel on it..without gloves. That was a bit strange. After that, my leg was just in pain. I had to limp around because the skin was taut and would hurt when I walked. It has since bruised and started to heal, though I think my leg is still swollen. Blah.




Anyways, on the second day of this workshop, we had cultural experiences! My favorite! We went to the green tea fields first. It was an amazing sight! So gorgeous! There was a little bit of a hike and I endured the pain in my leg to try to get as high as I could. I didn't make it all the way to the top because it was starting to rain, but I made it to the second highest point (I think). It was still beautiful. We also had green tea ice cream. I've had it before, but it was a nice treat after the short hike.




After the green tea fields, we went to Songgwangsa, which is a temple. In my experience, after you've been to one temple in Korea, you've practically been to them all. They're all just so similar to one another. However, this one has definitely been my favorite because it actually looks old whereas the other temples look very restored. However, this one is in the process of being restored, I think. At least some parts of it I saw some scaffolds and stuff. A couple of almost-monks also gave us a little information tour around the place. That was really nice. I learned a lot about Buddhism from that.

I have my Korean test soon! Tuesday! EEP! I'm first!!!!! Wish me luck!