Koffee & Kpop

This is an update to one of my very first entries about Korean school life, School Lunch.

To get it out of the way first, I’ll state here that I do not believe kindergarten teachers should have to give lunch to kindergarten students. They’re with them all day and they deserve to be able to eat lunch in peace.

My students this year are remarkably well-behaved during lunch time. A few make it a point to finish everything on their tray, whereas others will nit-pick until I ask them to eat more.

I have since learned that rice does not go on the right side of the tray, as that is where rice usually goes when honoring ancestors. Rice goes on the left side of the tray, and soup on the right. I spent an entire year honoring the ancestors of my students simply because I had no idea about the custom until a co-teacher noticed and pointed it out.

Unlike my previous school, where students brought in their own lunch trays, lunch trays and utensils are provided by a catering service, although most of my students bring their own utensil case that includes chopsticks, rather than use the fork and spoon provided. Food is served in plastic containers, but soup and rice are still in stainless steel containers and rice is provided by the school.

I usually set up four trays and fill those four with food before moving onto the next four, and while passing out the last four trays to students, I’ll start the “prayer”: “We are…” thankful for our food, blah blah blah. I amended the prayer a little and added a “Enjoy your food! May I eat?” at the end instead of ending with “Enjoy!” which, invariably, turns into a “eeeennn jooooo eeeee.”

Teachers get a little dish with the teacher side dishes, usually some spicy kimchi, Korean pancake, or sausage.

The food quality at my new school is better than it was at my last school. The meat consists of actual pieces of meat rather than the fat trimmings, and the food itself is tastier and has more variety.

The birthday party food is similar, although at my new school, parents of the birthday students provide a birthday cake and pizza, which is then distributed to the students. My first month, I had two birthday students and of course they each wanted to know whose birthday cake I was going to eat. Both, duh. We had been given halves of each cake and other classes without a birthday student were given the other halves, so each class has cake and pizza. In months were there are a lot of birthday students, sometimes there is leftover cake at the end of the day which gets offered to the older students.

The chicken provided is not fried chicken from a restaurant, which can vary in taste, spiciness level, and quality, but rather more like chicken tenders. The rice made by the school is still fried rice, but doesn’t have pork in it, and is better than the fried rice at my last school, which I often found too greasy. There is also usually banana and honey songpyeon.

At the end of lunch, I help the students scrape their leftovers into the soup bin (after doing a soup last-call), they stack them in a container outside the classroom, and go and brush their teeth before returning to wipe their desks down with a wet wipe and either color in their sketchbooks, play with blocks, attend manner class, or play in the gym.

Last week we had a traumatic event occur during lunch when one student discovered her first wiggly tooth while eating. Her mouth dropped in terror and she started screaming. I got her to spit the food out that was in her mouth because I was worried she would choke, and then took her to the front desk. It was her first wiggly tooth and she was absolutely terrified. To top things off, it was her birthday. That’ll be a Core Memory if she remembers it.