100 Things I Love about Korea: #81 - Pepero Day

11-11, AKA November eleventh, is Pepero Day in Korea.  Pepero are classic Korean snack cookies shaped like sticks and covered in chocolate.
According to one legend, middle school girls in the southern tip of Korea spontaneously invented this holiday on November 11 (because the one's look like the Pepero sticks).  They gave each other boxes of pepero along with the wish to be "as tall and slender as pepero."
But cynics say that the holiday is nothing more than a shameless marketing ploy by Lotte Confectionary, the manufacture of said snacks.  Either way, they get more than half their annual sales during the month of November, so I'm sure they're happy about it.
I love it because it's just good fun.  Who doesn't like eating chocolate covered cookies?  We all need another reason to celebrate life and taste a little more joy.

By the way, there are 10 different Pepero flavors.  Can you name them all?  What's your favorite?  Mine is almond - hands down.

100 Things I Love about Korea: #79 - White Day

After the male-focused Valentines day, it's payback time for the women with White Day on March 14.  Men should now give a gift to any women who gifted them a month earlier.  Some traditions even have a triple return - where the men give the women something 3 times the value of the gift they received.
Traditional gifts are marshmallows or white chocolate, but nowadays, almost anything works.
Basically, this is just splitting up the big Valentine's Day romantic holiday into two separate celebrations.  I kind of like this.  As I said before, men need all the romantic help they can get.  Also, it spreads the intentional expressions of love out for another month.  (The candy makers don't mind all the added business either!)

100 Things I Love About Korea # 47: Replay - Thanksgiving SPAM

[This is a replay of a previous post from September 27, 2007.]

"Happy Thanksgiving! Here's some SPAM."
Tuesday was Chuseok (chew-sock) here in Korea (and China - I think). This is a fall harvest festival, sometimes called Korean Thanksgiving. For Chuseok, nearly everyone around Korea travels to the home of a high ranking family member (oldest living member, oldest son, something like that). The roads are packed with cars, and the cars are packed with food and gifts. Near the beginning of September, the stores start to fill up with these gifts.
We westerners are always amazed at the gifts that Koreans give for Chuseok and Lunar New Year (in February). Some of the more popular gifts include: seaweed, liquor, spam, tuna, toiletries, socks, lotions, cooking oil, and fruit (huge boxes of pears, apples, peaches, or grapes). Sarah and I have always laughed at the popularity of SPAM here - you know the pressed meat in a can.
We have been blessed to have free babysitting for several months now. A woman connected to our church has both her children studying in the USA, and she is lonesome for children. Emma loves her, so ever Friday night, we take her to "Imo's" (Aunt's) house. We decided we would get into the Chuseok spirit, so we bought her a $35 gift pack of spam and tuna. That's a lot of spam!
We also picked up some bathroom gift packs for our neighbors (shampoo, lotions, toothpaste, body wash, loofa, etc.). When we dropped by with our gifts, they looked surprised, and the women of the house disappeared into a bedroom to scrounge up a return gift for us. It was good fun.