A Stop in Seoul and Settling Stateside

I no longer feel at home in southern california. Flying into Los Angeles, my guts said YUCK! Get me outta here!!! I think I want out of this whole world, though, not just any geographic place. Shortly after arrival, I headed south to visit one of my oldest friends. I am having fun riding her horses and playing with her kids. Her son's 5th birthday party was yesterday and it was good to catch up with her family. They are Christian and hoping I will find solace in the scriptures in the bible...I am appreciative of truth in any form and welcome all teachings crossing my path (with a healthy dose of discression). In trying to explain Buddhism to them, I think I talked too much about the idea of Being Nobody, Going Nowhere rather than Do good, Avoid evil, Purify the mind. I still have to develop a good 2-minute version of my experience in Thailand...

Seoul was very nice to visit, but I don't want to live there. Too many tall ugly buildings. I like wild places. My neighbor at Wat Phradhat Sri Chomtong gave me a map and suggested some places to visit on my stop-over, but I cleverly packed said information into my checked baggage which I could not access in Seoul (oops), so I spent the wee hours of the morning reading tourist information and studying the maps provided at the airport while the sun climbed out of bed and into a gorgeous cloud spotted blue sky. Just before I finished reading the literature, the women working at the tourist info counter arrived and helped me before they were officially open. I explained my interests, and she circled the main temples in down-town Seoul, wrote down the English language guided tour times where appliciable, and showed me a more remote old-style temple which I decided to visit first. She gave me a map book that included some essential Korean phrases (I tried to learn Thank you, but was not very successful) and a beautiful color booklette about Korean food including some recipies I'm excited to try. She even wrote "vegetarian" on a little paper for me. Very helpful!

I took the express bus into town, walked around the narrow streets and sleepy markets a little, found a small breakfast shop where I got a veggie sushi roll, miso soup, and some pickeled radish slices for 1000 Won (about a dollar/40 Bhat)! I felt pretty satisfied, but I bought and ate a second sushi roll because it was really yummie and cheap and I didn't know when I would next get the chance! This drew some funny looks from the women running the shop, but my tastebuds were happy. I then took another bus up a hill to a Mahayana temple with some Beautiful lotus ponds and coincidentally (synchronicitously?)arrived just in time for the mid-day prayer service. About 13 middle aged women were following a big mahayana monk in chanting, so I pulled up a mat and tried to do what they did. It was very different than the Therevadan morning and evening chanting I am used to. Much more rigorous (with standing and prostration meditation chanting as well as sitting!). I got tired!! funny...

Then I went and hiked up the "mountain" behind the temple (ele about 1800' I think) and down the other side to the subway. En route I met several very nice smiling korean people, including a man with a California tee-shirt on, so I asked him for directions to the subway. Turns out he did his grad work in Economics in the states and he was headed for the subway, too, so he helped me find it, as well as a yummie restaurant where I could find vegetarian bimbibap (spelling?)--a traditional korean dish with lots of veggies and pickeled seaweed and a fried egg over a bed of rice served with two kinds of kimchee (pickeled cabbage), one of which was too spicy for me to eat, even after 9 months in Thailand! Very yummie! Satisfied again with my meal, I bought two more veggie sushi rolls for an evening snack and headed back to the subway which I rode over to the royal palace (I forget which one). I arrived during the changing of the guard and marveled at the incredible number of enormous (2-4' diameter?) trees that went into the palace's construction. yikes! After wandering a third of the grounds and looking around in some of the ornately painted buildings, I ran out of time and left early to catch the train back to the airport to finish the long flight home to the states (spending 11 hours on the plane and arriving in LA 3 hours before I left Korea, thanks to the time difference and the international date line).

I am happy to be back on familiar soil and eating familiar food. Last time I was home, thai food still seemed like a tastey idea. This time around, if I have eaten my last Thai meal ever, I feel ok with that. ;) I'm very grateful to my friend for giving me space to relax, more than enough horses to ride, and even a few house and horse chores so I feel useful but not stressed. I am looking forward to going back to the Utah desert...Another friend has offered me a place to stay on her horse ranch there and I am excited to relax and mediate for the winter. Maybe I will work on my book about this journey...I am feeling more settled, and also beginning to get restless and wanting to move on again.