Pepero Food Baby

Every year, on November 11th, Koreans celebrate a holiday called Pepero (빼빼로) Day.  For those of you that are familiar with the Japanese snack, Pocky, it is exactly like Pocky, only Korean.  For those of you who are not familiar, Pepero consists of a thin cookie stick that is about four inches long and dipped in chocolate or a variety of other flavors if you so desire.  From a foreigner point of view, Pepero Day seems kind of like a snack based version of Valentine's Day, only crazier.  Basically, it's a mad frenzy of Pepero giving and you end up with a huge pile of the cookies and an ensuing Pepero shaped food baby.  Being the nice teacher that I am I gave all of my students Pepero.  I only got about half as much back but really that's a good thing because I do not want a  desk covered in Pepero for days.  I did however get some Ferrero Rocher from one of my students.  MONEY.  Pepero Day got me all pumped about Pi day in March.  Mmmmmm pie.

Persimmons are delicious.  I'm not sure how common they are in the US because, honestly, I haven't ever looked for them.  They have a texture half way between and pear and an apple and a flavor that is vaguely pear-like with a nice mango finish.  They are also ridiculously good for you, like pomegranates.  The last bunch I got was from one of my students who went and picked them last weekend, so now I have to figure out where to buy them.

Sometimes a girl just needs some retail therapy.  I know this sounds horrendously girly, but in all honesty I haven't really been shopping since I got here and I have a very minimum amount of winter clothes to withstand  the "Siberian" temperatures which are said to accompany winter here.  I am very excited about my purchase of a warm fuzzy bathrobe and bright pink jeans.

I had some fabulous Thai food last night.  I mean, I am closer to Thailand than I have been for most of my life so it would make sense that the Thai food is better.  Though somehow, this doesn't seem to work for Chinese food quite the same way.

Koreans aren't huge on breakfast.  They mainly just eat rice and kimchi.  Because of this, it is not a very common occurrence to find pancakes, eggs and bacon, and when you do it is on the expensive side.  There happens to be a lovely place near where I live called Butterfinger Pancakes that specializes is this and on Thursday I had a nice brinner there.  It was a little on the expensive side, but it was totally worth it.  My meal consisted of cherry tomatoes, carmelized onions, two strips of bacon and two eggs sunny side up all on top of a Belgium waffle with chives in the mixture.  I was expecting just okay, overpriced breakfast food, but this was totally worth the money.  Their food was fabulous.  It is up there with my favorite breakfast place at home that has pancakes that taste like vanilla wafers.

It's been really nice having Yin-A around at work this week.  Lots of bonding and reconnecting.  Everyone at work loved her so they are currently trying to see if they can get her a job at school.  I really hope they can work it out but I have my doubts.  We are apparently expanding next year so we will need new teachers, although there has been no mention of this need in any of the discussions.  There is also a problem because many parents have problems with the American teacher being on Asian decent.  The kids do think that the teacher is Korean at least at first, but the teacher is still a native English speaker and they still learn unaccented English.

Brittany got back last night completely wiped from her flight but she brought me some lovely American goodies.  Wooo Benadryl and conditioner!

Korean number of the day: 칠 (cheel) or 일곱 (il-gope) - seven

Korean word/phrase of the day: 선생님 (sun-saeng-nim) - teacher