English Festival 2015

I can't remember if I've ever mentioned it before, but here in South Korea many schools and/or districts will hold an "English Festival" at least once a year. The intention is to let kids have an "English experience" for a day. It can be a very broad description depending on the organisers. 

A couple I've been to have taken contributors from many different schools in one district and is kind of like a talent show. Groups from each school put on a short performance, all in English (be it a skit, rendition of a book, or a song), or compete together as teams to solve problems like spelling bees, races, and general knowledge.

Others, like the one my school recently had, are for one school only. They focus on an intensive day of games similar to what we'd play at the end of a lesson, craft projects, English music, or cultural education.

Pepero Day

Collective Pepero haul from students and each other

Technically the 14th of every month in Korea is a little commercialised 'love'-based holiday. From January's Diary Day where you buy a diary for your loved ones to use in the new year, to the more well-known and largely-celebrated Valentines Day and White Day in February and March.

My favourite is 'Black Day', generally the antithesis of White Day where singletons wear all black and eat 'black' foods to mourn their suffering love lives after 2 months of loved-up celebrations.

November 14th's 'day' is supposedly for movies, but I'd guess that it's generally overshadowed by Pepero Day which occurs on the 11th.

The story goes that on November 11th a group of middle school girls exchanged boxes of Pepero to encourage each other to grow tall and slender. Other people say that it's just because the date (11/11) looks like Pepero sticks.

Text: Happy Pepero Day!

Either way, it's very popular (well done, marketing team) especially with younger people, and the stores were piled high with intricately-arranged boxes of the stuff days or possibly even weeks in advance.

I wasn't really expecting to get anything aside from jokingly trading a box with Nick, but we both ended up with a few at school!

It's cute and silly and I love it even though it is just a big manufactured day to make money. As long as I'm getting tasty snacks out of it, who am I to argue? :p