happy pepero day!!

today is pepero day, south korea's equivalent of valentine's day. the only difference is it completely revolves around one kind of candy founded by lotte, a korean conglomerate. the day was made up becausae 11.11 looks like 4 pepero sticks. so you hand out these cookie sticks covered in chocolate (and sometimes almonds) to people you like. i recieved a few packages from my students. one is a cute little box with pepero inside. the outside has a pretty pink ribbon and a note from my student which reads, "thank you for teach <3 -David-" i also received a bag of two long pastries shaped like pepero.

getting chocolate is fun, but getting cute notes filled with grammatical errors is even better.

boryeong

this weekend, kirsten, maria and i went to boryeong to see daecheon beach, which is on the coast of the yellow sea. we left early saturday morning and arrived at the beach 4 hours later. we walked along the beach and took pictures. it was really foggy out so it was hard to see the surrounding islands. we also went too late in the day to see the beach, the tide was too high. after viewing the beach, we went to a korean spa and receieved a mud treatment. boryeong is famous for their mud, which apparently is rich in minerals and used to manufactor a lot of cosmetics. after the spa, we went to a coffee shop to read before heading back to our hotel and sleeping. we woke up this morning and went to the port, which was a five minute bus ride from the beach. at the port, there are a ton of huge bins filled with water and various sea creatures. we saw king crab, blue crab, octopus, squid, every kind of fish imaginable, some eel, squid, sea cucumbers (peach colored cucumber shaped...thing) and clams. as you walk out to the actual port, there are people fishing and tourists taking pictures. suprisingly, we were the only white people at the port that weekend. koreans aren't used to seeing foreigners and will sometimes ask you to take a photograph with them. one korean family cornered maria and me and asked us if we would. we found this strange, but allowed them. kirsten turned around, saw this happening, thought we looked like we were vacationing with the family and took a picture also.

on friday, my school celebrated halloween for the kids with a day long halloween party. i thought i would keep it simple and dress up as a black cat, so i arrived to work in black leggings and a black shirt with the intention of wearing cat ears and maybe painting a nose and whiskers on my face. after one of my korean co-teachers decided to paint on a nose and whiskers, she proceeded to paint more cat-like eyes on my face...and hearts on my cheek. i have never felt more korean. when the kids came, they had 15-20 minutes in every room where all the native english speaking teachers had a different thing for them to do. there was a halloween movie, a haunted house (little kids cried), they made a treat bag, a scary story, and i got to paint the kids' faces. it was a fun day, but kind of demanding.

i also started looking at law schools and studying for the lsat. after work i'll stay later and study at the office or go to a coffee shop near my place and read my lsat book/take notes for an hour or so. i'm actually enjoying my new routine of early morning work outs, lunch at home, work, then studying.