Hammin' it up for the holidays

If you've spent time in Korea before, this will be old news. If this was your first Korean holiday (or if you're reading as someone who has never spent any time in Korea), well, it may come as a surprise to you, but.... SPAM is a big holiday gift item here. Really big. Before the major holidays of Chuseok and Seolnal, you can find SPAM gift sets everywhere from your corner convenience store to the big department stores to COSTCO. I took this photo in Lotte Mart on Friday:

Get your $40 SPAM set here!
I've never been able to figure the SPAM thing out, myself. Anyway, about two weeks ago, my office gave everybody a choice of Seolnal gift (employers typically give Seolnal and Chuseok gifts to their employees). Our choices were a ham set, or something like 35kg of rice. Now, as I'd bought a small bag of rice back in September and have yet to make a dent in it, I chose the ham. I had expected that by 'ham' they meant 'SPAM' - but apparently there are some perks to working in posh Yeouido after all:
A nice variety of pretty good ham.
(And the beasties are pretty pleased by its arrival, too!)
And speaking of the beasties - this is day 4 of my 5 day holiday, and I've spent most of it lounging about with these two critters :-)