Escape in a corean temple

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After having enjoyed a lot the food in Seoul, we decided to do a templestay, very popular among the Koreans. A templestay, as indicated by his name, allows non-monks to stay in a temple for a few days, or a few months, and adopt the life style of the monks living there. In the end, we, unfortunately, spent only a shorttime with monks, which made our experience less authentic than we might have hoped for. We only saw them during the morning chanting ceremony (5:00) and the evening one. Even if it was very different from our expectations, we still spent a really good and interesting week-end ! The temple where we were staying was also a sunmundo training center, we thus had a few session to teach us the basics of that sport in which meditation and yoga are as important as the « combat sport » part (including a little bit of bow shooting). I really liked these few days but I have to admit that I’m not sure I would have liked for very long waking up at 5 am every morning to do 108 bows (basically kneeling, touching the floor with your head and standing up while joining your hands) followed by half an hour of meditation, all that before 7 am, and then doing it all again before going to sleep. We are not yet totally ready for the religious life of monks...