Today was an earlier start, we met at 8 AM. However, with the hours of sleep I was able to catch yesterday, it didn’t feel like anything at all. Dr. Yun suggested I try the braised chicken today and wow! I want to eat that every morning now! We met up and took the bus to arrive at Bukhansan National Park. It was a gorgeous place with plenty of natural terrain and plenty of fully equipped old people who apparently scale mountains for fun.

The way up was treacherous. Rocks were moving, people fell in the streams, no railing most of the time, etc. I had one really bad fall where my entire body just kind of slid down. Luckily, we’re all okay and made it to the Seunggasa temple at the top. The place had about 180 stairs from the mountain to the very top and was decorated with lost of traditional Korean structures. It was very quiet and peaceful so we all made an effort to respect that. They even let us hang up a lantern!

After this, we had a group lunch then separated for break. I personally slept right through it and woke up with maybe 5 minutes to change my outfit and meet the group. Like always, I did eventually come down and we boarded the subway to a Korean cooking class. Our teacher was a wonderful lady who was very experienced at cooking and regularly working on kdrama food scenes and had a whole celebrity wall of famous stars she had worked with. She taught us how to make bibimbap as well as the cultural importance of each part of the dish. It was very fun to make and we ate it along some pre prepared mushroom stew.

My free time was spent in a small group of four exploring some cute Seoul cities before I splurged on some nail sets.

-Therese