Lunch

Many of you may have never encountered Korean food before. Its not too popular at least in Indiana...I was fortunate enough to get addicted to kimchee at a tiny Korean restaurant near my Grandma's house before I left for Korea. I thought I'd show you what a typical school lunch looks like for me:



From top left, continuing clockwise around the tray:

1) Kimchee. I listed this first because it is, without a doubt, the most important item on this tray. What is kimchee, you ask? Well, its basically fermented spicy cabbage. Koreans eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every day. Sometimes they even wake up in the middle of the night and sneak some out of the kimchee refrigerator. Yes - Koreans eat so much of it that they have to buy a separate refrigerator exclusively to store it. I LOVE it.

2) Tiny fried shrimp with a mysterious red sauce. First of all, they eat the shrimp whole (tail and all) and I don't really know what the red sauce was all about. It tasted suspiciously like the red sauce I had on the chicken I ate with Eddy, Ruda, Trev, Cathy and Rachel last night...

3) Namul. There are many kinds of namul in the world, basically it just means "seasoned vegetable". The dark green namul you see on the tray is spinach (shigeumchi) namul with sesame seeds. Its my favorite kind of namul (Hilary is partial to kongnamul, or soybean sprouts). This is by FAR my favorite Korean food. Just call me Popeye.

4) Tofu and egg guk. Guk refers to any broth-based soup, and today's had tofu and egg, as well as some green onions. My favorite soup is turnip greens in fermented bean paste broth. That actually sounds like a joke but its not.

5) Rice. All day, every day, rice rice rice. The Korean word for rice is "bap", or "bop", or "pop", or "bab", or "bob". I've seen it written like all of those. There is no standard English in Korea, just whatever you happen to prefer at the moment. This is why my co-teacher spells "SpongeBob" like "SpongePop".

Actually, its quite funny to hear my kids pronounce "SpongeBob SquarePants" - it sounds like "spongee pop scare panch". I had no idea what they were talking about for WEEKS. A lot of my 6th grade girls have SpongeBob nicknames - Doongie (Squidward), JingJingI (Patrick Star) - its kind of weird. So I asked if I could be "Gary" and they obliged. Which means, I'm officially as cool as the 6th grade cool girls. YES!

Now I must retire...to bed. Enjoy your 3 feet of snow :)

Jess