Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Pepero Day

Today we celebrated Pepero Day. It is an day in South Korea similar to Valentine's Day. It is named after the Korean snack Pepero and held on November 11, since the date "11/11" resembles four sticks of Pepero.The holiday is observed mostly by young people and couples, who exchange Pepero sticks, other candies, and romantic gifts. Lotte denies starting the holiday and instead states that they noticed a bump in Pepero sales around November 11th and after continued popularity they decided to then encourage the holiday with special gift boxes and other promotions. Some consider it to be a contrived holiday and some teachers have encouraged children to exchange healthy snacks to help combat obesity.
According to one story, Pepero Day was started in 1994 by students at a girls' middle school in Busan (another big city in Korea), where they exchanged Pepero sticks as gifts to wish one another to grow "as tall and slender as a Pepero".

Okay and for reference:
Pepero (빼빼로) is a cookie stick, dipped in chocolate syrup, manufactured by Lotte in South Korea since 1983.Lotte usually does about 55% of their Pepero business in November every year.


Anyway, so my kids were eating candy all day long. Thank goodness today was a short day for me...Many of the teachers got a ton of pepero and candy today. That was the extent of my day, overall, not bad...

3 comments:

Erica said...

dood, today the Asian Affairs Center, which is right next to our office, had it's 10 year anniversary reception thing and they had food (lucky me--all I brought for lunch was a frozen burrito). Most of it was American, but they had kimchi (yay!! haven't had that since Chen's Palace in K-ville and I LOVE it) AND they had some Pepero sticks too. They didn't mention anything special about them, but now I know the truth, muahaha! kthx <3

Anonymous said...

Sounds like "sweetest day"... a reason to spend money on crap!

In response to your earlier question, Jon, Whitney and Brooke seem good. We haven't seen Whit and Brooke since graduation, but Whitney describes the little one as "squirmy". She lost her bald spot too, apparently!

In other news, "I quit my job with the worst boss in history (LITERALLY)!!!" (maggie) "I love my job, and have already been promoted to CFO!!!" (kevin)

--KEVIN PEPPER AND MAGGIE PIE

P.S. We HAVE been drinking, if you were curious...

Amanda Tedesco said...

Erica, it is so great that you have tried Kimchi!!!I didn't have it before I got here, at first I didn't like it but now I do...
Kevin and Maggie, Kevin, glad to hear you are the CFO...means you have enough money (and the power to leave when you want) so you must come visit me! Maggie, don't worry Kevin is making enough money for you both, it's time to get barefoot and pregnant!
PS. Glad graduation hasn't hindered your drinking habits.