Korean Job Discussion Forums

[stumptown]

A couple of years ago I worked at an elementary school and got to eat lunch there and it turned out to be pretty good I would say 90% of the time. Coincidentally the worse meal there turned out to be the spaghetti. They were all really confused when I brought my lunch on that day.

Anyway, how is the food at your school. Do you get menu in advance? I have to pay 33,000 a month which works out 1700 per lunch.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

I usually eat at mine, though not ten times a week like when I first started. Today I just paid my fees for the first time this year. I told my head of English (my minder) that I had not been keeping track of when I ate there, but had had about four lunches and three dinners a week for 13 weeks in March, April, and May - so could we just do an estimation? They were fine with that.

[Hobophobic]

I eat there everyday...usually it is good at my school....Wednesdays seem to be the best day....Friday is usually always garbage...it's almost as though it is a bell curve....it's like they want to ruin my already crappy Monday, get me excited mid week, and send me off with my tail tucked for the weekend

[inspector gadget]

I just started this month, the first three months I walked home and had lunch there.

The food is decent most days but far from good I would say.

The reason I started was that I was getting sick of walking the ten minutes home, cooking limited varieties of food in a quick time frame. I thought I would give the caffeteria a try and its better for me as its easy, no cooking(or clean up) and a more balanced meal than what I was eating at home for lunch.

We don't get the menu in advance so everyday is a suprise but you always get rice, kimchi, another salade side dish, soup and either meat or fish.

I pay 33,000 per month.

[stumptown]

My first meal of my new school today was: dakdoritang, duen jang kuk, yolmu kimchi, sauteed new potatoes and a banana. I ate it all it was so good......or maybe I was just really hungry. Oh, great dialogue too:

Dumbass teacher: Can you use chopsticks?
Me: No, I ate everything with the spoon. Didn't you see me? (Other teachers get it and laugh)
Dumbass teacher (after looking at my empty tray): "Was it good?"
Me: No, it was disgusting, that's why I ate everything. (more teachers laugh...she figures it out and stops asking stupid questions)

[Howard Roark]

I eat lunch every day at LG Philips. It's always decent, sometimes I'd even say really good...and it's FREE so it's even better!

I used to work at a public school in Seoul. The food there was so terrible I felt sick to my stomach every time I had it. Oliver Twist ate better. Glad to hear all the schools are not like that.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[sarahsarah]

Yep...I ate the cafeteria food twice a day, 5-days a week. I could have eaten there 3 times a day, but I usually don't eat breakfast. Why did I eat there so often, you ask? I lived in the dorms my school and there were no restaurants around because I lived in the absolute middle of nowhere and had no cooking facilities in my room.

The food wasn't ever really that bad and I mostly enjoyed it. It just came as a surprise to the cafeteria manager that I didn't like tentacles which we had OFTEN. She asked me the first time we had squid if I liked it, I told her no. She proceeded to ask me every single time after that if I liked squid. Clearly the answer never changed, but she seemed equally as surprised each time I told her no.

Yeah, I got the comment about if I knew how to use chopsticks a lot too. I mean, these people watched me use them everyday, but still asked. Hmm...

[Hollywoodaction]

[Demophobe]

I eat at my school cafeteria every day for free. It's pretty good, though sometimes the fish is just scary. It's very basic, but it covers all the food groups and is healthy enough.

[pet lover]

We don't have a cafeteria or a kitchen, so the food for the kindy gets gets delivered.....around 9:15 in the morning and it sits in a classroom until 12:00, when they eat it. Teachers eat for free, but the only foreigner nuts enough to take them up on that is Free World and even he sometimes opens the dish with all the little bits of side dishes, glances at it, and then closes it again. It was lots of fun to see his face when he just got back from Thailand and had that stuff sitting in front of him and calling itself "food". Before I went vegan, I ate it for a few weeks and then started to bring my own food or just wait for the break when I could go home and eat real food there.

Sometimes, lunch is almost over and the classroom is still nearly full of kids picking at their food with the Korean teachers telling them to hurry up and eat it. I feel so sorry for them as that food looks like slop most of the time and is NOT healthy food.

[SPINOZA]

Yes, mine's very good.

(public middle, Seoul)

[crazylemongirl]

Nope. We often have fried stuff at our school (corn dogs, hamburgers) and the other days I often find myself not able to eat anything because it's so gross and loading up on rice, which wasn't so good for my figure.

I also got sick of people looking and commenting on what I eat.

I bring in my own lunch so I can better control what I eat.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Koreans are sure intensely curious about what waegooks eat, aren't they? I was with my Canadian friend and a couple of teachers from his school at Costco on Wednesday and they seemed so interested in all the foreign products we were putting in our cart. Perhaps it's because their diets are so restricted, or because they never eat authentic foreign food, only bastardised (fusion food) versions?

This week I'm doing a lesson on cooking and food and finishing it by making peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and some of the kids can't seem to follow even such a simple recipe as that, after watching me demonstrate. (They sure love jam, though).

[ella]

For those of you who bring lunch, what kinds of things do you bring?