The Jones' Korean Adventure

I laugh about this now...

As many of you know, I'm the type of person who gets really, really excited about the littlest things. So, when I found out that Korea has a holiday called, "Pepero Day", I was really looking forward to celebrating it! Pepero Day is kind of like Valentine's Day, but with cookies instead of paper valentines. Peperos are chocolate covered cookie sticks, and the kids take them to school and give them to their friends, or boys and girls may give them to that "special someone"...it's great! Fabulous holiday, right?

Pepero Day broke bright and sunny, and it was stacking up to be a great day. Sam and I had gone shopping the night before to get peperos for all our students, so we were prepared! The other teachers at our school had told us that the kids are CRAZY on Pepero Day...on an intense sugar high that lasts forever! They also told us that the teachers get mounds and mounds of peperos.

My first class started, and I handed out my peperos to my kids. They're my favourite class, so I also gave them each a smiley face pencil...just to really get into celebrating mode! They loved the peperos and the pencils, AND they really were on a sugar high...it was extremely hard to get them to sit still and learn anything. I didn't get any peperos that class, but I figured that maybe the little kids didn't give out as many.

That's what I thought until I went back to the teacher's room after class and saw Sam and Saralyn's mound of peperos. Mel and I both didn't have any, so we had a good laugh about being the "bottom feeders" of the school, and not getting any peperos. That joke was pretty funny until I came back from my second class, still with no peperos, and saw Mel with an armful. It's funny to be "A" bottom feeder, if you're stuck there with someone else, but to be "THE" bottom feeder is an entirely different story!

And that's pretty much how the rest of the day went...each class I would hope that I would get my "mother load" of peperos, and each class I'd come back with a smile and a laugh to report that I didn't get any, while the other teachers added their latest peperos to their piles.

The low point of my day happened when a student came in, looked at Sam's desk and commented on how many peperos he had. S he then looked at my desk, and said, "Becky, no peperos?". To which, I laughed and said, "Nope, Sam's winning, haha". She then dug through her bag, and handed me a box of peperos before leaving the teacher room. Receiving PITY peperos brought me to another place altogether :0)

Luckily for me, Sam is extremely generous and has been sharing his drawer full of peperos with me (seriously, we have a drawer in our apartment dedicated to keeping his peperos safe). What have I learned? Shared peperos taste just as sweet! :0)

Sam, with some of his pepero stash.
Here are my kiddies...crazy about those peperos! (p.s. They're not as short as this picture makes it seem...I was actually standing on a chair when I took this)