School Lunch

If you work at a school in Korea, chances are one of the perks of the job will be a complimentary lunch. Mind you, this means you trade your personal lunch hour to eat with your students in tiny little person chairs, but a free lunch is a free lunch, right?

My last school in Korea had new students every week so the meals that we were served repeated almost weekly. I got so sick of doncatsu and jajang and stopped eating there altogether after a few months. In Taiwan our meals weren't too bad, but any meat dish was inevitably just going to be a bunch of bones and skin in a sauce and all the soups were served without spoons. I'm a pretty picky eater but I think my current school lunch is the best of the bunch. I eat the cafeteria food about half of the time... usually when it's not something fishy being served. For me, I accept that a 50% approval rate is pretty good! If I don't like what's being served we are given the menu a month in advance so I can bring my own food accordingly. They also provide PB & J or "ham" & cheese sandwiches if you're hungry.

So anyone want to know want a Korean private school lunch looks like? Last week I decided to document our meals so I could share them with you, loyal reader.

Monday- a peppery beef soup (although it doesn't matter what flavour they claim the soup will be, it is always a fishy miso broth), scrambled egg, rice, kimchi and a crab/bean sprout/yogurt salad. Shawn Teacher had Mcdonalds- Quarter Pounders are back in Korea, baby!

Wednesday (forgot my camera on Tuesday!)- some kind of tofu/seaweed/caper soup, bulgogi (very nice!), vegetable pancake and 2 kinds of kimchi-type stuff.

Thursday- (fishy) Chicken soup, japchae noodles (worth staying up after 10:00 for!), broiled mushrooms, seaweed, and kimchi.

Friday- tofu/mushroom soup, fried rice with anchovies (!!!), spicy tofu, kimchi, and apple. I had a big bowl of apples that day!

My students love our lunch. Canadian kids are so picky, so it often amazes me the way my kids will shovel their mouths full of seaweed or tofu and then ask for seconds. Can you imagine any kids at home -or their parents- trying almost any of the above foods? Like I said, even if I don't like what's being served, I appreciate the variety of foods the school offers. And there's always spaghetti day once a month to look forward to! Whatever is served, it's usually better than what Mel's PAYING FOR at public school where there are no customers to keep happy. Here's what her lunch looked like yesterday:

Deep fried octopus, fried egg. kimchi, snail stir fry and hot dog/kimchi soup!

What did you have for lunch today?