I went to Seoul this weekend with another teacher. We left Friday evening and stayed overnight at the bathhouse. The other teacher teaches until 7:00, and we had tickets for the 7:25 train. We have to clean our classrooms after school on Fridays, and we're not allowed to do it before the last class is over. I teach until 6:00, so I cleaned my classroom, went home, packed a dinner, went back to the school, helped the other teacher clean his classroom, and then we ran to the train station. We made it by 7:20, and then the train was 15 minutes late. We went straight to the bathhouse when we got to Seoul.

The other two teachers met us on Saturday morning. We went to the fashion district, where I sent all three of them on a hunt for silk scarves for my mom. We came up with a few. From the fashion district, we stopped briefly at Itaewon before heading to a huge bookstore that has a pretty good English language section, but it was really expensive and REALLY crowded. From there we headed back to the train station and then back to Sapkyo.

Here's a picture from my trip to Seoul. I'm standing in front of the Dongdae-mun gate. It was originally built in 1397 but was reconstructed in 1869 and again following the Korean War. Seoul is such a modern city that it's really exciting to find bits and pieces of the old city, even in reconstructed versions.Church was fine this morning. Dr. Kim took us to a Chinese restaurant in the next town over for lunch today. After lunch, he took us to this beautiful lake, and we went for a short walk. The weather was beautiful, and the lake, surrounded by low mountains, was a great view. I was happy to walk all day, but the others weren’t, so we stayed for about 30 minutes and went back to Sapkyo. I had a few hours at home before going back to church for the evening service.