Typical Korean lunch

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So I've had a couple of deskwarming days and am able to finally catch up with my blogs! I've been thinking of different posts to write about things I experience in day to day life in Korea and this is one of them. Lunch time in a Korean school.

The teachers have their separate cafteria behind the school that we eat at. It's pretty small since we only have about 40 teachers altogether and we have a cook who makes meals from scratch everyday. She is an excellent cook and all the meals so far have been delicious. We file in to the lunch room and grab our water cup which is about 6-8oz so it is puny and then grab a spoon, two chopsticks, and a metal tray. There are 3 staples in a Korean lunch: white rice, kimchi, and soup. Once you pick up the tray, you scoop a pile of rice out of this huge tub and put it in the bigger bowl area. Then you grab a side dish which could be anything from, seaweed salad, some "squid salad" maybe, dumplings, fish with fish sauce, and finally radishes. So the side dishes can really vary. After that you grab another sort of side dish which can be anything and then always at the end of the line is the kimchi. There are different kinds of kimchi but it is always spicy and in red sauce. Kimchi is basically fermented cabbage and sometimes when it is thinly cut into strips it's better to eat vs sometimes it is served in these chunks that at first glance look like potatoes but are really not.

After we get the kimchi, she ladles us each a bowl of soup and it is typically a seaweed soup, tofu soup, and sometimes a beef broth. She hands it to us with both hands and we receive it with both hands since that is the polite way to accept things over here and I always say An-nyung-hasseyo to her when I see her and then kamsamnida when I get my soup. She always smiles at me when we see each other. It's not too bad overall and is welcoming since it is starting to get chillier out now. I have mastered the art of using chopsticks and actually prefer it. It's not going to make sense but I think it enhances the art of eating since you have to concentrate on everything you pick up and can only pick up a little bit at a time vs just using a fork and knife and slamming the food down.

After we are finished eating we put the remainder of the food we didnt eat into the soup bowl and pour all the food remnants into a separate food trash can and then put our silverware in a water bowl, stack the cups, and place the empty bowls for her to do the dishes with. She somehow has it down to a science and knows when I am done eating and putting my dishes on the counter because she always turns around, looks and smiles at me. Then I saw Chal-mogo-simnida which means I have eaten well, and then she laughs! I think she just really enjoys hearing me try and say it and sounding really weird at doing it but it does make my day that much more enjoyable!



I will take some pics sometime soon of my Korean lunch so you have a better idea of what I am describing.

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