Pepero Day

"Good afternoon. How are you doing today?" I asked my first junior class of the day. As the class mumbled a response, a little girl slid out of her second row desk and trotted to the podium where I stood. "Teacher, this is for you," she said, and shoved a bright coloured box into my hand. "Oh, wow, thank you!" I said, surprised at the impromptu gift. She dipped into a short bow before rushing back to her seat. A few minutes later, as I walked around the room separating the class into pairs to practice the dialogue we were studying, another little girl stretched her hand out from her desk by the wall to hand me a similar eye-catching box. "For you," she said simply. I thanked her, as well, and then continued with the lesson.

Fabrice had told Jonathan and me about the generosity of Koreans. "Your students will give you gifts. They'll even sometimes want to take you out to eat and they'll never let you pay for the meal. Teachers are highly respected in this culture and students will show their respect by giving gifts." And now, only two days later, I had received my first gifts from my students, and not even my adult English students, who Fabrice had been talking about, but my junior students! During the hour break Jonathan and I had between the junior classes and our evening adult English class we shared the two boxes of treats. They tasted sort of like hard cookies covered in chocolate and were a nice snack since our last meal had been lunch about six hours earlier.

In my next class I figured out the reason for the gifts. I had just finished going over the Word of Life verse and praying at the start of my evening adult English class and was about to jump right into the pronunciation lesson when one of my students, David, reached into a bag and produced a bright red box. "This is a present for you for Pepero Day," he announced grandly, coming up front to hand me the box. I looked down and noted the word 'Love' written in a flowery script on the shiny box. "Thank you, David," I said. "That is so nice of you. But could you tell me, what is Pepero Day?" He sat back in his desk. "Tomorrow is 11-11. We call it Pepero Day. It means Cracker Day. We give these kinds of treats, Pepero treats, to our teachers or coworkers. They are long and skinny like the number 1. That is why Pepero Day is on November 11." And the next morning I got another box of Pepero treats from my student Nicholson. Right after class Fabrice, Jonathan and I shared the treats and an Asian pear that one of Fabrice's students had given him the day before. It wasn't exactly how I thought I'd spend Remembrance Day, but we all enjoyed the gifts from our students. I sure wouldn't mind if Pepero Day was adopted in North America!

Asian pear and Pepero Day treats