A Weekend Adventure [part 1]

So about a month ago the boy and I received an e-mail from one of our Captain and Clark subscribers.  It was from a young Korean woman that is living in New York.  She was so thrilled that we had made videos about her hometown of Pohang that she sent us on a little quest.  We were given a set of clues and that was it.

Our first clue was to go to a certain apartment building in town and find a golden animal.  This golden animal was supposed to lead us to someone named "Geumee Umma".  Once we found the animal (which happened to be a golden retriever) and Guemee Umma, we were told to return on the day of the next full moon.  Mysterious, no?

The only other instructions given were to wear suitable trekking shoes and to meet at 9 in the morning.  From the e-mail we knew that we'd be meeting a "special" monk but we had no idea what it really entailed.  So at 9 o'clock on Saturday morning the Boy, his mother, Corey, Paul, and myself met up with Geumee Umma, jumped in her car, and went here.

Bogyeongsa

Now, we've all (with the exception of Mama Staudinger) been to Bogyeongsa before.  It was one of the very first hikes that Chris and I went on when we arrived in Korea.  We love to hike to all of the waterfalls and picnic along the way.  We've been numerous times, but we've never taken the hidden trail that we did today and we've never, I repeat, never hiked as ridiculously fast as we did today.  Geumee Umma is one fit woman.  She has to be in her 50's and she didn't even break a sweat.  As for me, my poor little legsies are still hurting.  We hiked at a steep incline for about 45 minutes before we reached the temple.

It was a ridiculously beautiful and painful hike.  It was definitely off the beaten path yet we noticed there were quite a few people heading the same way that we were.  When we finally reached our destination we were greeted by these babies...

Oh... and THESE too.  I nearly died when I found these little guys.  Ares needs a playmate.  We're thinking the pudgy multicolored little guy.  It's probably a good thing that our apartment is the size of Heidi Montag's brain or else we'd own more animals than we could possibly handle.

I will call him Boaz... or Kekoa... or Khyber... or Bishop... or Titus. 

When we finally reached the temple we could hear a monk chanting and we could see women bowing in prayer.  There were also women in the courtyard that were preparing a meal of sorts.  Being that no one really spoke English we used hand gestures to ask if they needed help but were sent to explore instead.  It wasn't until after their prayers that we were able to officially meet Monk Mook Sul.

... stay tuned for part 2.