besides missing my students and fellow teachers, probably the thing i miss most about my job as an elementary school english teacher is the food at lunch. the cafeteria food at my school was amazingly delicious. there was one woman whose job it was to design the menu, and i only wish that i got some recipes from her before i left. when i first got the job some of the other teachers were telling me that on summer and winter vacations they actually start to really miss the food. i found that to be true for myself as well. my only complaint would have been that the menu was so various that when you got something really delicious you knew you weren't going to get it again for another month or two. but even that wasn't too bad since the next day another different but equally delicious meal was served.

another thing i liked about the cafeteria system there was how the 5th graders were put to work helping serve the food and other necessary jobs. it was good for them to have some more responsibility and it also gave me a great opportunity to tease them when it was their turn to scrape excess food from other students' plates into a big bowl of discarded food slop. i never contributed to that bowl, however, since i always made it a point to eat every last bite of that day's delicious korean meal.

almost every day we'd have some sort of soup, along with rice and meat or fish. then there were great vegetable side dishes like kimchi, and always fresh fruit to be eaten at the end of the meal. man, i miss that food!

tagged: cafeteria elementary korea korean food lunch school