Buddha is the only fat man in Buddhism

Apologize ahead of time for my disjointed thoughts. That's the way they came out, thus that's the way they read.
This weekend was quite the whirlwind... let me explain:
Friday night the posse rolled up (ie walked) to the local bowling alley for a little western entertainment. Scratch that. I have no clue where bowling originated. Probably not in the states. It's too fun.
Continuing on.. bowling doesn't begin until around 11:oopm because ALL of the other teachers, less Galen and I, start their teaching around 2pm and finish around 9:00/9:30/10:00. At 11pm on a regular day I'd already be through stage one and headed straight for REM. Well not quite, but you get the idea.
I am competitive to a fault. It's taken a long time, but I am finally able to admit this; I'm hoping the first step is acknowledging you have a problem. BUT.. I am currently working on solving this problem, and think bowling in Korea may be the answer I've been looking for.
I am awful (not an understatement). My low was somewhere close to 75 and my high wasn't much higher. I think I almost reached 100 once. Despite my many failed attempts at knocking down anything, I had a fantastic time, and further, am quite sure I will never get much better. Thus, bowling may be able to cure my need to win. And it's not just bowling, it's bowling in Korea. Mainly because all the finger holes in the balls are so small, you can't find a good ball anyways to even attempt to get better. My bowling name is Sweet Action. I have no idea why.

I think it may have been close to 7am before I hit the hay in preparation for my weekend retreat.. which was..

Lauren went to a Buddhist Temple! Nothing says inner calm like sleep deprivation eh?
So, on 3 hours of sleep, I hoped a bus to meet up with friends from college (Janny and Ryan Kiely) and find my chi.
I did not find my chi. If you or someone you know has seen it, please contact me.
Buddhists are bad asses. This is a tale of how I came to know this...
We arrive, find our rooms (we slept on a blanket on the floor), and headed for dinner. All vegan, boys on one side of the room, girls on the other. Side note: You must finish what you take. Every last grain of rice or piece of vegetable must be eaten. (If they weren't Buddhist, I'd think the place was being run by my german grandma). Meal: not too shabby.
On to chanting/prayer/sunmudo. Now I've been doing yoga every day for a month, and I will tell you, my body was not meant to do all those moves. The funny part is, it wasn't the sunmudo (a form of martial arts) that was difficult - it was the chanting and prayer time that almost killed me, or brought me closer to Nirvana. One of the two.

Chanting is 1.5 hours of kneeling down to bow, standing up, kneeling down, standing up (multiply that sequence times 20). And then when you're not in en route to kneeling or standing, you are sitting on your calves (like kneeling but in a sitting position). I almost cried. Of course I was in tears before I even got there - these monks find the highest hill around, and that is where they build their temples. The walk up to the temple alone is enough to burn the heiny and beg for water. Folks, let me tell you now before you think you can just receive your share of energy and chi and peace out. THAT IS NOT THE CASE. You gotta work for it. Those monks are not kidding around. Instead of focusing on nothing for the 30 minutes of silence, all I could think about was the pain shooting through my legs. The best part was that they didn't really explain to us what was going on or if we should follow the group, so Janny and I just kept laughing hysterically under our breathes while we thanked Buddha for stuff (that's my guess, everything is in Korean, so we could have been ordering Beef with Broccoli for all I know) And we called it a day around the late late hour of 9:30pm. This of course is late when you are woken at 4am by monks chanting around your dormitory.

(Saturday I went to sleep after the sun came up and Sunday I woke up before the sun came up. Score: Sun - 1, Lauren - lost both times)

One might think there's not much you can do at 4am. Well they'd be right. This is why we went straight to morning chanting and meditation for another 1.5 hours. More pain, more trying not to think about anything, but instead thinking about not just my legs that are falling asleep, but my stomach that is rumbling, my fingers that are numb from the cold, and certainly thinking about my nice warm floor space I'm aching for at the moment. After chanting, we did a 30 min meditation walk which was actually pretty cool. We walked all over the premise and then did morning stretches etc etc. Favorite quote of the weekend: we had to pair up around the circle to do a few partner stretches. I end up with this little tiny girl whom I'm supposed to be giving a back massage to. All the sudden she turns around and says, "I said DON'T rub my neck, you'll hit my piercings". Okay.
Last part: we go to breakfast and are told in a 5 minute brief that this is a sacred ceremony. There is no talking, you are to make no noise, and you are to follow the order of the meal properly. He went over everything once and then we were off.
This may have been the most stressful meal of my life. We were told to be mindful with every bite we took - mindful of the farmer, or the grain, of the people who prepared it, of the monks that offered it, etc etc. And when they said "mindful" they meant swallow everything whole because grand master (flash) over there eats his whole meal in one fell swoop and you MUST be done when he's done. Done eating, done cleaning (in the proper mode and order). I can't explain that process - just know if involved a kimchi leaf and drinking all the water used to clean my bowls. Finally they came by and checked our bowl of water (that was used to clean each bowl) to make sure it was still clean. I passed the test. Some were not so lucky - you think the wrath of a woman is bad, feel the stare of a monk and get back to me. We threw in the towel around 11am (skipping out on lunch and opting for a full meal at the bus terminal).
The moral of the story is this: You can not be Buddhist if you are: a slow eater, fat, inflexible, a late sleeper, have a bad back/ legs/ knees, enjoy meat, or like mattresses.

(you can however still be Buddhist if you like gatorade or coffee - they have vending machines on the premise for these).