Pepero Day and Soccer Game

Friday was a Korean holiday- pepero day. Although widely celebrated in Korea, it's not really an official holiday, but rather the ingenious marketing scheme of a Korean snack manufacturer. Peperos are these little cookies that resemble a chocolate covered pretzel stick- long, skinny, and chocolate covering about 4/5ths of it. Now the way I imagine it, one day someone in a cubicle at Pepero, Inc. was typing the day's date, November eleventh, and realized that the "1"s in 11/11 resembled Peperos. Then his innate Korean sense of entrepreneurship kicked in, and he thought, "Koreans love holidays. Why not make every November 11th a holiday where people have to buy our product and give it to each other?" And thus Pepero day was born. So Friday morning I bought $2 worth of Peperos, so I'd have two or so to give to each student that day. But although I gave out all my boxes of Peperos, I got much more Peperos and other sorts of snacks (including Pumpkin taffy) from my kids. Here's a picture of what I still had left after eating my fill of Peperos and Pepero-related snacks at work.


Yesterday (Saturday) I met up with my friend Izzie, and after showing her the awesome DVD of the Jeter boys' Central America summer backpacking trip (that my brother Daniel made), we went to Namdemun Market, where I got some new glasses to replace the ones I've had since senior year of high school. We also looked for winter hats (that's Izzie trying on a hat- it's getting pretty cold here) and I met this Peruvian guy in one of the shops who didn't speak much English or Korean, so he was loving being able to have a conversation with someone in Spanish. Of course, we exchanged cell phone numbers and made promises to hang out in the future, and I told him I'd help him learn more English. On the way back we went by that same subway station that had the bench that Ben and I took a picture on, and now instead of the bench it had this random table with headless manequins, so of course I had to get another picture there.

After Namdemun, I went with my friend James (see picture) to see the Korean national soccer team play the Swedish national team at World Cup Stadium in the western part of Seoul. It was fun, especially since there were lots of free events going on outside of the stadium, like taking your picture with a cardboard picture of the team, free cappucinos, and contests to win free t-shirts, blankets, etc. I almost won the t-shirt thing where you had to kick a soccer ball into a hole in this cardboard goal they had set up, and I hooked up all the free stuff repeatedly. The game ended in a tie, 2-2, and it was a lot of fun, although a little cold. One last note- you know how they have those plastic inflatable sticks that you hit together to make noise at games? Well, I saw this one Korean guy who was doing that, except instead of those sticks he was using two big plastic beer bottles, whose contents he had evidently recently consumed (I really wish I had gotten a picture of it). Classic.

Seeing the sights

Last weekend I went to Coex mall (probably the biggest mall in Korea, it's huge and mostly underground) and to Building 63 (the tallest building in Korea) with Ben and his friend Beth. Building 63 is on Yoido island, an island on the Han river (which runs through the middle of Seoul), and it technically has 63 floors, although 3 of them are underground. We had to buy a drink from the cafe at the top to stay there and look out, and the cheapest stuff on the menu was $7, but we decided it was worth it to hang out there for a while and enjoy the view (in the picture the Han River is on the very left). Also, in the Sinchon subway station on the way home we saw this random bench with a backdrop behind it, and we had to take our picture on it.

Disco who?

So for halloween, not only did one of my co-workers hold a costume party, but we also had to wear costumes to school on both Tuesday and Wednesday. So this would have to be a good costume- I originally was thinking of just getting some round toy glasses and saying I was Harry Potter, but you can't get away with that for three days. However, money was still really tight, as my first paycheck wasn't going to arrive until Wednesday night. Luckily, I looked at my wardrobe and realized that I kind of had a theme going already. So, this is what it boiled down to:

Leisure suit jacket, aviator sunglasses and polyester shirt: $0 (already owned them)

Overdone afro wig: $3

Disco ball necklace: $2

My Halloween Disco outfit: priceless

P.S. Alot of my kids were confused by my costume, and some even seemed scared by my hair- I told them, "Think Disco Stu, or Michael Jackson when he was a kid", but that didn't really help any. Evidently Koreans missed the 70s. Well, at least the 11-year old ones did.

P.P.S. Here are some pictures of my co-teachers and kids.