I eat lunch at my public school during the week. I keep talking about making my own lunch – but I’m lazy and if I were to make my own lunches I’d really want them to look like the ones at Lunch in a box.

I’m not willing to put that much time and effort and money (accessories and packing thingers!) into my lunch just now. I have other hobbies that I neglect horribly and I shouldn’t pick up anymore. (Lunch would become a hobby. Trust me. ) On the other hand, I’m not so sure that our nutritionist is really providing a balanced diet at lunch and perhaps I should bring in my own lunch for health reasons.

Anyway – for the time being I eat my lunch at school.

At lunch JY told me about a Cyworld blog where a nutritionist posts pictures of the meals from her elementary school. (The Cyworld site will be in all Korean). Their school lunches look really delicious and much healthier than the ones we have.

Above – an example from the site. See doesn’t that look delicious?

A blurry picture of lunch at my school. I think the black bit on the left is eggplant, the noodles are spicy chicken noodles, radish kimchi 깍두기, rice and Dwenjang 된장찌개(the fermented beanpaste soup) with hand-formed flour dumplings 수제비. I think the only thing I really ate was the soup and the rice that day.

I’m picky about kimchi. I’ve had home-made kimchi and I can tell that the school kimchi is mass produced.

A while ago JY taught me the idea of what she called “deep taste” 깊은 맛. Traditional Korean foods have this taste. Kimchi, dwenjang jigae, shikye, etc..
The kimchi at school doesn’t have this taste. 학교 김지는 깊은 맛이 에없아요.

It doesn’t have any heart. It wasn’t prepared with any love or spirit 정성. Which led to “the food wasn’t make with spirit” 음식은 정성이 없아요. (with spirit would be 이다/있어요 like that apple pie my sister made for me. mmm)

Then – to do something with spirit, to do your best or to do something wholeheartedly is
정성 다하다.

There is another word for traditional Korean food 구수 하다 but it’s more specific to hot soupy things (that’s the concensus after discussion with JY). Yesterday I had a 곡밮 that was 구수하지 않아요.

The last phrase I learned because we talked about why the gyms in Korea are lit up blue (perhaps because it promotes weight loss?) and the butchers all have pink lights (to make the meat look better). Which led to a talk about trends, and then about people who are pushovers.
People who have thin ears, or who believe whatever they are told are “괴가 얇은 사람” (literally ear thin person)

Yup. That’s what I learned today. I love talking with JY and it’s nice to do that with a big chunk of time and not so much stress. MJ just came by and dropped off a really nice picture one of the other teachers took of the three of us at Seoul-land yesterday. Apparently he is a really well known amateur photographer and went to Vera Wang’s wedding to take photos for her. We look great, and the photo is very well composed.
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