#8. Exciting new holidays

This past weekend, a couple of friends and I took a short trip down south to Busan, a place you may remember me mentioning in September of last year. Even though this was my second time in Busan, I had an amazing time and got to see a lot of things that I didn't get to see on my last go around. This trip--and the subsequent days in Daegu--highlighted another of my top ten favorite things about Korea.

#8. Exciting new holidays

The reason why I was to l

eave work and head down south was because of a national holiday on May 5th known as Children's Day. Yes, in Korea children have an entire day devoted to taking off from school, playing outdoors with friends and family, getting presents from their relatives, and eating large quantities of sugar--and that's in addition to Christmas. Now of course, as a teacher I'm certainly not complaining. Kids not having to go to school means I don't have to go to school, which gave me the opportunity to go somewhere fun (even if that somewhere was packed with the same kids that I was at that moment NOT teaching).

It's nice to have little holidays that you don't expect when you first arrive, and there are many others like it. For instance, tomorrow, May 10th,

is also a national holiday for Buddha's birthday. Given that most Koreans are agnostic/apathetic toward religion, I'm not sure why this is still celebrated other than the fact that it puts the Buddhists on par with the Christians for nationally recognized holidays. All I know is that I get a random Tuesday off, there are pretty lanterns everywhere, and I am going to be using that time to sleep in and study Japanese like I should have been doing while I was on vacation last weekend. Koreans also celebrate both solar and lunar New Year, so teachers often get a few vacation days for each. There are several Independence Days, celebrating mostly all the different times Korea has managed to throw off Japanese rule, and also a holiday towards September commemorating the harvest.

National holidays aren't the only fun celebrations in Korea. November 11th is known as Pepero Day, an entirely commercialized day devoted to the selling and consuming of chocolate-covered biscuit sticks (in the shape of ones, so we celebrate on 11/11; get it?!). One month after Valentine's Day on March 14th, it's White Day, when women receive white chocolate from their admirers. Another month after that and its Black Day, when all those lonely souls who didn't get anything on either Valentine's Day or White Day go eat black noodles for health and prosperity. My favorite, however, has to be Teacher's Day (on May 15th), when the parents of kids buy pretty things for their teachers as a "thank you for dealing with my hyperactive child three times a week and not banging his head against the wall."

Yup, even though I do sometimes miss my American holidays--even less mainstream ones like Columbus Day and Veteran's Day--it's nice to experience the Korean way of doing things. I bet by the time 11/11 rolls around this year, I'll even miss Pepero a little bit.