I had the opportunity to go on a hike during free time Sunday morning. I actually got up at 6am and did it. Only 9 students went, and we met up with the alums (Grace, Will, and their friend) to take us up the mountain. Before meeting them, we had an hour bus ride, and I had to try not to fall back asleep the entire time. Once we got to walking to the start, we realized that it was going to be difficult. The walk to the beginning of the hike was straight up a hill with some stairs along the side of a road for 30 minutes. Once we got to the entrance there were a ton of rocks we had to climb up. I stayed a bit behind to look at the views and rest with some others while the majority of the guys kept walking. Their long legs really came in handy for this. I wasn’t able to go all the way to the top because I was worried about getting back down. The rock was fairly smooth, and my shoes didn’t have good traction. We were still extremely high up and had an awesome view, but I regret not trying to get to the tippy top. The view was spectacular, and I could not describe how cool it was. I loved how you could see everything and there was so much green. It was absolutely beautiful, and the long hard trek was completely worth it. Going back down was twice as fast and the entire trip, including the walk to the start and back to the bus stop, was a little under 4 hours. We unfortunately skipped the Seoul Tower, which we could’ve gone to if we tried going straight there, but all of us were starving and exhausted. Noa, Susu, and I went back to the hotel to shower and then got some food at the conscience store before meeting with the others from the hiking group to meet up with everyone else for the cooking class.

The cooking class was super fun. I’ve never been a great cook, but I like to do it when I can. Susu and I were partners for this activity, and we made some bibimbap. It was the best bibimbap ever. This might be because I made it to my liking, but it had a lot of meat, and I ate all of it up. Instead of going out for a long time during free time, we decided to stop at Olive Young and then get a small, sweet treat before chilling in the hotel room. The hike wiped me out, so I was ready to go to bed pretty early, but I stayed up to hang out with some friends before getting some sleep.