Happy Pepero Day!

Friday, November 11th was Pepero Day here in Korea. Pepero is a kind of cookie stick dipped in chocolate. Here's a brief article on the meaning and possible origins of Pepero Day:

Stores are stocking up on Pepero, a popular snack, and driving up the cookie maker's sales as Nov. 11, Pepero Day, draws near. Lotte Confectionary Co., which owns the Pepero brand, said yesterday that last month, it sold 13 billion won's ($11.7 million) worth of the snack to food retailers. "As a single product, this is the highest sales we've seen, second only to Xylitol gum. Sales of Pepero have seen double-digit growth since 2000," said PR official Ahn Sung-keun.

The Pepero snack is a replica of Pocky, the Japanese treat of chocolate-dipped cookie sticks. The 11th of November is known as Pepero Day, because "11/11" looks like four sticks. Pepero Day supposedly started in 1994 at a girls' middle school in Busan, where students exchanged Pepero sticks, wishing each other to become as tall and slender as a Pepero. But some suspect that Pepero Day was actually dreamed up by Lotte's marketing team. Today, it is an unofficial holiday celebrated mostly by children and couples, like Valentine's Day (another "holiday" some cynics say was created by a marketing team).

So, my co-teacher and I received a crap-load of pepero from our students. I've included a picture of some of what we got, but it really doesn't do our actual amount justice. You see those individual sticks strewn across the pile? Yeah, we probably got (not exaggerating) 100 of those, but we gave away about 20 of them each class (4 classes). And we left at lunch (to go to a demo class, I'll talk about it later), otherwise I'm sure we would have got tons more. Crazy stuff. But I guess they're pretty cheap. I love the ones that come with notes that say, "I love you!"
Yeah, so on Friday I went to a demo class at another school. Pretty much, I (and a bunch of other people) go and watch another class and then discuss it afterwards. I have to do a demo class on December 9th. I guess they're a big deal...I don't know. But I went to one that was also a Korean teacher and a native English speaker teacher (like my set-up). I have to say, it kind of sucked. So I'm feeling pretty good about my classes now. :) There were 4 others whitey English teachers there that I met briefly. A bunch of the Koreans teachers there seemed to know my name, which weirded me out a little bit. Then during the discussion this one Korean lady turns to me and says, "Emily, I hear you can speak some Korean!" So everyone stares at me and my co-teacher starts urging me to speak Korean. Ok, honestly, I really don't speak any Korean...at least not enough worth mentioning and "showing off." So it was a bit embarrassing and of course, put on the spot I couldn't think of a single thing to say except dumb things like, "kamsahamnida (thank you)." Maybe someone from my school told someone I could read Korean and it got morphed into I knew Korean. Oh well.

I didn't do much this weekend, again. I watched a movie (Legally Blonde) with Will on Friday night. Saturday morning I talked with Joleen on the phone (after ignoring her first 2 calls because I was afraid it was a teacher from my school harassing me about a lesson plan). Then I took the subway to Suwon and went to a bookstore there. I bought a few books. The Rule of Four, The Dante Club, Sophie's World, Roadmap to Korean (a book on speaking Korean...I seem to think that simply owning more books on speaking Korean will improve my ability...while ignoring the actual studying part), and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Korean. Yeah, I can't read it, but I just thought it was cool. And it came in 2 volumes. The latest must come in like 20 volumes. The new movie comes out here in December, I think.