White Day

Lets start with a culture lesson for those of you that do not know about this holiday. February 14Th is St. Valentine's Day. In most countries this is a day where loved ones exchange gifts that are generally in a symbolic heart shape (nerdy people may try to create something that resembles a more realistic heart shape... silly rabbit) and often involving chocolate and/or stuffed animals. In Korea and Japan, however, Valentine's Day is only when the girls give chocolates to the guys. In Japan they make a distinction between "honmei-choco", love chocolate, and "giri-choco", courtesy chocolate. I'm not sure if Korea has this distinction because they don't give chocolate to people out of courtesy.

Anyway, so the girls give chocolates to the guys on Feb. 14Th and on Mar. 14Th the guys give a gift to the girls. Again, in Japan they guy has to give a gift to everyone he got a gift from (and it has to be equivalent in relative value so often people give gifts to rich people to get something nicer in return - ex: a girl that makes $100 gives $10 to a guy. The guy makes $1,000 so he should give the girl $100) Again, in Korea they don't give gifts in this manor so this rule does not apply.

Bonus Culture (for over achievers) - In Korean, Black Day is on April 14Th and celebrates single-ness but often leads to singles meeting other singles and creating couples (if only for a short time).

"Why the history and culture lesson," you ask. Because I had a dinner date with Grace tonight and gave her chocolates. They weren't the special white day chocolates or in a big basket with a stuffed animal but I thought it would be a nice thing to do (especially if they celebrated white day in China... found out they don't).

We started by meeting at campus plaza. We decided to walk down the street looking for a place to eat. Anyone that has gone out to eat with me before can tell you that I'm not picky about the food, because of this, it's really hard to get me to choose a place to eat. So, we walked for awhile and talked. It was nice and she was (and still is) cute. After we had walked to the end of the street (a couple of blocks) we decided to go into the 3rd restaurant we saw on the next street. But, after about two blocks we realized that there were no restaurants on that street. So we turned around and did some more walking and talking. We eventually ended up at a nice place and got some Korean food.


It was really great. We talked and ate and smiled and laughed. She's really great and her English is good. It was the second time I had wished I took more Mandarin. I feel bad that she's doing all the work on the language side of things. Every now and then I'll throw in a Mandarin word or phrase that I remember and that fits in context. She seems to enjoy my attempts.

After dinner, we walked around for awhile. We talked more and explored a little bit of Suwon. It was a little cold with the wind and I could tell that she was getting cold (but wouldn't admit it :-P). So we walked back to her apartment [the campus didn't have enough room for all of the girls (since guys and girls can't be on the same floor in the exchange student dorm and can't be in the same building for the other dorms) so some of the girls were put up in apartments]. Upon arrival, we stood outside and talked for a little while longer and then hugged and parted ways. That's right, I'm too chicken to try for a kiss on the first date. But we both agreed that "we should do this again sometime soon." ^__^