Pepero Day is 11/11! (Also, 1,000 Pageviews!)

Happy Pepero Day! Here in Korea 11/11 is Pepero Day each year. If you're familiar with Pocky at all, Pepero is Lotte's version of the same snack. It comes in multiple variants, but is the most well known for being a long biscuit covered almost completely in chocolate. Pepero is a fun snack for all ages and they really go crazy with it over here. Going to the store (we went to both HomePlus and Lotte Mart and saw a variety of others too) you'd think it was Valentine's Day with all the Pepero and chocolate everywhere. All with decorative packaging and even things like large plushies and gift baskets. 

Pepero Day is definitely a consumer holiday and we were able to see it pretty clearly. On our visit to HomePlus earlier in the week we grabbed a few boxes for ourselves-- the strawberry kind for Zach and the chocolate filled kind (called Nude) for me. We also stocked up again later, one cannot have too much Pepero! That and they were only 790 won each.

It was interesting to look at all the marketing and also to watch the people who were doing all their Pepero gift shopping at the time too. I saw three girls with a shopping cart and they had a list of who they needed to buy for and then had their stacks of Pepero lined up on different sides of the cart so they knew whose was whose. Then we ended up in the checkout line behind a family with all this Pepero (below).

Not only do the larger grocery and general shopping hubs have displays, but so do smaller stores such as 7/11, and this little place we passed yesterday. Even places that don't sell food had some sort of product deal where you (I believe) get free Pepero along with your purchase. 

I kind of wish I had seen the Doreamon thing, whatever it was Pepero related because my older elementary girls would have flipped out and loved me forever if I had given it to them. Oh well. Speaking of which, two of them gave us large Pepero on Friday.

We also ran into a multicultural version of Pepero (like everywhere else, they even had Pepero-type things at Tous les Jours which is a bakery) at Dunkin Donuts too. Yes, those are Pepero churros. I was kind of tempted, but I think I have more than enough Pepero type things for the time being.

Last, but not least, I want to thank those of you who are reading our blog and I hope you're all doing well. With this we've reached 1,000 page views and I hope you are all enjoying following along with us. Please feel free to leave comments or questions, we like hearing from everyone. So with that, I give you a photo tribute (in Pepero), for our little achievement. 

Still to come? Halloween post and photos, more "lost photos", and maybe a rant or two. :) Thank you!

Hanboks Up Close

This was originally going to be one post about Chuseok, but after looking at all the pictures I have and all the content I wanted, I really decided it was best to focus on one and then look more closely at all the details. So this is our detailed post! By detailed I mean up close images of the hanboks. The different hanboks were all beautiful and it was fun to inspect them up close and personal. 

I am going to try to have a hanbok made for myself to bring home, before the end of our contract is up. What a neat thing to bring home and keep to remember the trip by!

Happy almost Chuseok!

They were all so excited this morning! That's James at the table and Julia and Stella twirling around the room.

Things have been busy and not lately, so updates have been slow. Chuseok (which is like Korean thanksgiving) is coming up on Sunday, September 30th and so we are going to have a 5 day weekend in which I am hoping to do some major updates. The pictures in my camera need to be uploaded! I also need to do a recap of our trip to Seoul, which Zach talked about, but I haven't done so yet.

Anyway, the above picture is from this morning when the girls came to school dressed in their traditional hanboks. They had run up to the second floor and were yelling "Man teacher!", trying to get my attention up on the third floor. Not being dressed yet or anything, I hopped out of my pjs and into clothes and went downstairs. I heard Zach talking to them downstairs while I was getting ready and he just said "awwww, you guys are soooo cute!" and then I finally went downstairs to see for myself.

Both of our classes were decked out in hanboks today and they were so adorable. They seem much less complicated than Japanese kimonos, and I think I like them better too. I took tons of pictures today though, so along with the trip pictures and others from recent events they should be going up in posts in the next few days.

In other news, we just got back from our quick trip to HomePlus which was absolutely packed with people shopping for food and gifts for Chuseok. We accomplished our mission of acquiring some alcohol and other miscellaneous food items since places will be closed for a couple of days.