The hagwon provides lunch on school days. The Kinder kids eat in their rooms with the Korean teachers, and the native teachers eat in an empty class. There are always rice and kimchi, then usually a soup and maybe octopus, snails, seaweed, ham chunks, acorn tofu, regular tofu, or fiddleheads. Sometimes I don't know what it is but I just stick it in my mouth anyway and swallow quickly if it tastes bad. Normally I eat it before asking Canada what it is in case the name or ingredients chase me from the experience.
Today I ate alone.
Canada was off preparing to leave on Saturday. Australia hasn't been eating with us lately. Sometimes the elementary Korean teachers will sit in if they came in early to get work done. But today I was alone.
Cook-teacher came in. She doesn't speak English or understand it. She knows a few words like thank you, hello, and, apparently, soup. She dragged me into the kitchen and got a bowl, the same the students use with pokemon on them and are sized for a smaller stomach. First she dumped in a big bone. I was in the doorway so I couldn't see if there was any meat on it (there wasn't) but I saw there was no broth yet. So she dropped the ladle in the vat for what I figured would be the soup. No, she got me another big bone. Then she poured some broth in.
She handed the bowl to me and I said "kamsamnida" (thank you) and took it back to the table and actually looked at the bare bones. There was a little meat, but mostly the bowl was filled with bones. And not just small fish bones or chickens bones. They were vertebrae. I think from a cow.
I could see spongy marrow and the traverse processes (which look like wings on either side). They were definitely vertebrae.
Each bone was so big I could hardly stick my spoon in to get the broth so I picked up the bowl and drank it. It tasted like bacon soup.
Today I ate alone.
Canada was off preparing to leave on Saturday. Australia hasn't been eating with us lately. Sometimes the elementary Korean teachers will sit in if they came in early to get work done. But today I was alone.
Cook-teacher came in. She doesn't speak English or understand it. She knows a few words like thank you, hello, and, apparently, soup. She dragged me into the kitchen and got a bowl, the same the students use with pokemon on them and are sized for a smaller stomach. First she dumped in a big bone. I was in the doorway so I couldn't see if there was any meat on it (there wasn't) but I saw there was no broth yet. So she dropped the ladle in the vat for what I figured would be the soup. No, she got me another big bone. Then she poured some broth in.
She handed the bowl to me and I said "kamsamnida" (thank you) and took it back to the table and actually looked at the bare bones. There was a little meat, but mostly the bowl was filled with bones. And not just small fish bones or chickens bones. They were vertebrae. I think from a cow.
I could see spongy marrow and the traverse processes (which look like wings on either side). They were definitely vertebrae.
Each bone was so big I could hardly stick my spoon in to get the broth so I picked up the bowl and drank it. It tasted like bacon soup.
Mmm bacon
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