Spam and a ten dollar pear

It's been a couple weeks since Lunar New Year, but I wanted to write an entry on it anyway. It's a really big holiday here, probably one of the most important. Everywhere you go shopping, there are massive and expensive gift sets for sale, and some of them I found quite amusing. Our school gave a gift set to each teacher, and the foreign teachers got different ones than the Korean teachers. Thank god. The Dove gift set is what the foreign teachers got, and the spam/olive oil set was what the Korean teachers got. Koreans LOVE their spam. Seriously. It's sooooo funny. Also, they have pears here that are the size of softballs. I got one of those. I took a picture of it next to the wine bottle to show it's size, but it still doesn't do it justice. It was huge. Then I saw them in a gift set at the supermarket. There were 9 pears (of that size) wrapped in a pretty box, and the price was 90,000 won. That is $90. No shit. I didn't even like it, it tasted watery and no normal person could possibly finish it by themself, it would take me days to eat it. I took a couple of bites and threw it away. A $10 pear. Some of the parents gave the teachers gifts...I got a case of seaweed. 12 packages. WHAT? I guess the Koreans use it a lot in their cooking and they make sushi-like rolls at home. Except here there isn't raw fish inside, it's called gimbap. I really like it actually. Instead of raw fish they put radish, spam, carrots, cooked tuna, and some other unidentifiable things inside the roll. It's really good. I eat it several times a week, and it's only $2 for one whole roll.
One more thing--one of the mothers gave all the female teachers a face exerciser. It looks like a cell phone (that's what I thought it was at first) but you charge it and use it on your face. I guess it's supposed to keep you looking young. I haven't used it yet because the instruction manual (and DVD) are in Korean. Crazy high-tech. Here are some pictures of the gift sets, pear and face exerciser...