A few weeks back on a random Wednesday afternoon, my co-teacher patted me on the shoulder and told me “okay, we’re going”.
“Great” I replied, then had to semi-hesitantly respond “…where are we going?” hoping I hadn’t missed a message about a meeting or event somewhere.
One thing about living in Korea and not speaking Korean past a basic level means that you need to be able to roll with the punches. This often results in being kept out of the loop of what is going on until a bus pulls up to your school.
My co-teacher filled me in while we walked out of the school. Northwest of my town is a mountain called Baegunsan, and apparently I was about to take an impromptu trip with all the other teachers there for an afternoon of light hiking.
It didn’t take long to get there, and with not much grade, we were quickly making ground up the mountain, walking up the wide paths with yellow, red and orange leaves strutting out into and above the path. It really reminded me of Falls back home around Ontario, with the bright colours throughout the area.
We came up to a bridge about half way along the trail, which according to my co-teacher, is a very famous bridge here. Roughly translated, the bridges name was “The Deity’s Bridge”.
As the path cleared out of the trees, we quickly came up on a Buddhist temple. Although the tree colours reminded me of home, a Buddhist temple certainly isn’t something you’d find back in Prince Edward County.
I walked around the grounds with one of the other teachers, a middle aged man with basic English but better than my Korean. Walking around, he points out a patch of Green Tea leaves right out front the grounds to the temple and began explain the different names of plants and tree’s we came across.
As we hiked further in my principal came up to me with a maple leaf in his hand.
“Canada? Canada! Canada?!”
My co-teacher informed me he was asking what the difference were between a Korean Maple and a Canadian Maple, which weren’t much besides size and maybe how early the arms of the leaf branch out.
Walking further into the temple grounds we came up on a small singular pagoda building with a monk inside chanting and playing the drums.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85rDWgKXwNU]
We walked around further until the sun began to fall behind the mountains. It’s always nice seeing the colours change, but seeing it in the mountains this way is very refreshing.
