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.