new thoughts.

While I am obviously no longer in Korea, I am still very much in contact with Korean culture. I talk to anywhere from 10 to 18 Koreans every Sunday through Thursday. While the learning curve is a bit slower on this side of the world, I am still able to learn a lot from my students. It is one of my favorite things about working for Spicus.

I've learned that even though Korea's economy is not much better than the USA's economy, it is still important to hire new people. One of my students, a lawyer specializing in white collar crime, told me that his law firm hired 9 new lawyers a few weeks ago. He said that if his firm did not hire new personel, it would look bad to the public. This sort of idea parallels Korea's strong emphasis on matters of appearence. While all public companies face pressures from their stockholders, hiring new staff is less important than raising stock prices. Often, workers are sacrificed to benefit said stockholders. What's really important depends on your cultural viewpoint.

Today I learned about "White Day", which I believe is similar to Sweetest Day. For Valentine's Day in Korea, women give chocolate, usually hand-made, to a male as an expression of love or some kind of social obligation. For White Day, the men return the favor to their female counterparts. Traditionally the men gave their ladies white chocolate - thus the meaning of the holiday. Instead of white chocolate, men can also give marshmellos, jewelry, or other similar gifts. The idea is that on White Day, men give a larger gift than they receive. For those who do not celebrate Valentine's Day or White Day, there is the April holiday of Black Day. Black Day is marked by single Koreans eating a specific type of noodle dish with a black sauce. The dish comemorates the Korean version of "Single Awareness Day".