The Politics of Lunch

It's been almost two years since I left Canada and moved to Korea. Of all the things that I love about this country, the food is definitely not one of them. You have all heard me rant about this before. Not wanting to eat pork or beef, rejecting bait fish and octopus, or cold oyster-like things, or super spicy vegetable stems, or "I don't know, lives in sea".... these have been hard to justify to my work colleagues in both Suncheon and Mokpo. I still remember sitting with my first co-teacher in the cafeteria in Suncheon and her asking me, "Is this [fruit covered in ketchup and mayonnaise] delicious?", and the look on her face when I was like, "NO!".

And so it has been. I've stopped taking anything that contains any sort of sea creature, I can feel the bile rise in my throat when I smell fish-based soup. I have jumped back from a bowl that revealed itself to contain a whole crab.

A few months ago, I stopped eating rice - the main staple of every meal - too. I was literally gagging on it... I sometimes couldn't even lift the spoon to my mouth. I don't even eat rice at home either, or in a restaurant.... (it's just the Korean style rice that I don't like - white and flavourless... Dude, where's the basmati?).

I'm pretty lucky that my school and its teachers are so open and understanding and willing to understand me. I explained that I am not used to eating so much rice, and that I don't want to waste food, I told the kitchen ajummas that I did enjoy certain things, but that it was often too spicy (I once sat with a glass of water and rinsed off each piece of spicy lettuce and cucumber, but I digress).

The funny thing is that I go out for Korean food a few times a week... last night, I absolutely gobbled a bowl of kimchi... Ahhhh - why do I feel like I have to justify this?

But, back to the point. After months of school lunches (and to be fair, if a Korean went to a Canadian school and had to judge us by our cafeteria fare, what would they think???) that continued to get smaller and smaller (sometimes literally a spoonful of rice and a few chopstick-fulls of whatever vegetable was offered), after two years of sometimes skipping lunch and spending the day hungry, all the while having school lunch deducted from my pay to the tune of about $40 - 50 a month, I finally decided to either go home for lunch, or bring one with me. Keep in mind that this momentous decision has taken TWO YEARS to finally come to fruition. Food is such an important part of Korean culture, that to even imply that you don't like the taste of something (or, for example, enjoy this version of it, but not that) is a major insult.

Here's the hard part: Where should I eat? The fridge and microwave are in the teachers' room. The cafeteria is in a different building. Yesterday, I had something that needed heating, so I ate it in the teachers' room, stealthily, hoping no one would see that I was hiding away... and how ridiculous is that? Today, I've brought a cheese sandwich (cheddar, dijon mustard and dill pickles -- all bought at high expense from a foreign food store in Gwangju)... not something that needs microwaving. Today, I will finally sit in a school cafeteria and eat something completely different.

I will have to let you know how that goes.

Oh yeah... almost forgot. Last Friday, I made Kraft Dinner and brought a pot of it to school. I loved seeing the reactions on my colleagues' and students' faces. Some of them loved it - the kids were grabbing it by the handful. And, to be fair, most people at least tasted it.... even if their faces wrinkled up afterwards. Like I said, I'm pretty lucky to be in a rather open-minded school.