Saturday November 11th is 빼빼로 대이 (Pepero Day). Since my school had that Saturday off, we celebrated this wonderful holiday on Friday the 10th. Pepero, or Pocky as it's called in China and (I think) Japan, are plain sticklike cookies that have been dipped in chocolate. They come in other flavors like almond (little almond bits in the chocolate), strawberry/coffee/vanilla (flavored white chocolate instead of plain chocolate), and double chocolate (chocolate cookie dipped in dark chocolate). The ostensible reason for Pepero Day is that all the 1s in the date 11/11 look just like little sticks of Pepero...a fact that is clearly reason enough to spend tons of money on fancily packaged Pepero to give to your loved one (Korea seems to be chock full of Valentines Day-like holidays). The week or so before the holiday, stationery stores across Korea fill with giant displays of pepero in their super cunnin' little boxes. At Gongju Gyodong Chodeung Hakkyo, Pepero Day is a Huge Deal. My students talked about it all week long, with groups of 4th and 5th grade girls hanging out in my music room and spending entire periods making lists of pepero recipients. I was kind of excited to join in the fun...although reluctant to spend hundreds of dollars on pepero and clueless about what to buy. I settled on buying a bunch of individually wrapped sticks of large, strawberry pepero...which turned out to be perfect. I gave them out during my classes and randomly to students throughout the day (I ran out before lunchtime, but fortunately was able to regift a lot of the pepero I was getting from my students), and it really gave the kids a thrill--even the too-cool 6th graders--to get pepero from the English teacher, since it's not the sort of thing a normal teacher would ever do. I could hear them talking about it in the hallways all day long. I got tons of pepero from my students too...they came piling into my room during free periods to give me pretty boxes, ran up to me in the halls with individually wrapped sticks, and slid pepero into my hands when I walked by their desks during class. It was really sweet and flattering...except that I don't particularly LIKE pepero and, despite giving lots of it away, I still ended up bringing home everything in the picture below:
Saturday November 11th is 빼빼로 대이 (Pepero Day). Since my school had that Saturday off, we celebrated this wonderful holiday on Friday the 10th. Pepero, or Pocky as it's called in China and (I think) Japan, are plain sticklike cookies that have been dipped in chocolate. They come in other flavors like almond (little almond bits in the chocolate), strawberry/coffee/vanilla (flavored white chocolate instead of plain chocolate), and double chocolate (chocolate cookie dipped in dark chocolate). The ostensible reason for Pepero Day is that all the 1s in the date 11/11 look just like little sticks of Pepero...a fact that is clearly reason enough to spend tons of money on fancily packaged Pepero to give to your loved one (Korea seems to be chock full of Valentines Day-like holidays). The week or so before the holiday, stationery stores across Korea fill with giant displays of pepero in their super cunnin' little boxes. At Gongju Gyodong Chodeung Hakkyo, Pepero Day is a Huge Deal. My students talked about it all week long, with groups of 4th and 5th grade girls hanging out in my music room and spending entire periods making lists of pepero recipients. I was kind of excited to join in the fun...although reluctant to spend hundreds of dollars on pepero and clueless about what to buy. I settled on buying a bunch of individually wrapped sticks of large, strawberry pepero...which turned out to be perfect. I gave them out during my classes and randomly to students throughout the day (I ran out before lunchtime, but fortunately was able to regift a lot of the pepero I was getting from my students), and it really gave the kids a thrill--even the too-cool 6th graders--to get pepero from the English teacher, since it's not the sort of thing a normal teacher would ever do. I could hear them talking about it in the hallways all day long. I got tons of pepero from my students too...they came piling into my room during free periods to give me pretty boxes, ran up to me in the halls with individually wrapped sticks, and slid pepero into my hands when I walked by their desks during class. It was really sweet and flattering...except that I don't particularly LIKE pepero and, despite giving lots of it away, I still ended up bringing home everything in the picture below:
2 comments:
cara teacher--I am SO jealous of all your pepero! oh my goodness! i only got two sticks out of the bag...and a box from my 8 year old boyfriend next door. you most definitely WIN the pepero game. looove barney teacher
Call me crazy, but what is Milk Project: Whole Milk? I have some Korean pencils and office stuff of this brand and was trying to find out about it, and your blog seems the only thing really related that Google finds. Is it just a sort of brand and doesn't mean anything or is there some sort of project to get Koreans to drink more milk or...
Just for the record, good blog, I like it.
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