Luncheeee!

Hello,

This week I will show you what meals I eat at school and give you some links to Korean food sites cause I don't feel comfortable critiquing food. I'm sure not many of you know that I don't really taste food. I mean I do, but the taste of food is not that important to me. I can eat almost anything that doesn't cause me physical pain. I also don't think the names of food is important, it wasn't until Sinclair laughed at me that I found out the difference between a steak and a chop. I still cant tell with chicken thighs and chicken breasts. I don't really taste the difference between full cream and low fat milk, cabbage and cauliflower are the same thing, they just look different. So while I like chocolate and  carbs, I think it's more of a physical reaction of pleasure in my body than my taste buds doing any work. Hence pictures and names will be all you get and that's if I can remember the names.

Basic meals have three things in common.
1. You will almost always get rice.
2. You will almost always get kimchi
3. You will almost always get three sides with your main meal.

The basic tray, chopsticks and spoon combo looks like this:

Monday:

Today was Bibimbap day :-) YAY! Every one loves bibimbap. It's rice with veggies and red pepper sauce that you mix together to make deliciousness. There is seafood and egg soup on the side. A juice. 2 cold pastries and kimchi.

Tuesday:

Today was Samgaetang day. I love Samgaetang, but not everybody does.

It's chicken in rice porridge and that greenish orange thing in the top is the kinchi. The sides are a plum a juice and a rice cake.

Wednesday: 

Today we have rice and soup. The soup is beef soup but I was not surprised to find a octopus tentacle or two. The top left sidedish is a chicken and mushroom stew thing. The middle it a cold prawn and marrow salad on todays portion of Kimchi. the top left is a cold pastry filled with cold icing sugar stuff. Yum!

Thursday: 

Beef and seaweed soup! It's more delicious than it sounds. there is also rice as usual. The top left side dish is kimchi (surprise!). The middle is a fish cake. and the left or cooked veggies with baby anchovies as seasoning. Baby anchovies is a good salt replacement since they're filled with protein and naturally salty :-)

After the mean we hand in our cutlery and crockery for the cafeteria ladies to clean.

We throw our left over into this massive drum (I'm not gonna lie it gets pretty gross, but you get used to it.)

then you move over to the mandatory green tea staion. The green tea is in the urn, the little cups are in the cup sanitizer. then you wipe your mouth and go off to the staff room to brush your teeth. 

Koreans brush there teeth after ever meal and you can get really stylised toothbrushes here. All the teachers leave there toothbrushes in the staff bathroom. I think it's really nice. I hope to continue doing this when I get home. 

For our last day I'm gonna show you what a teachers dinner looks like. Cause we eat out together as staff quite often. 

Friday:

So on this day we wend for a school dinner in Buyeo. We don't always go to Buyeo but today we did. The meal was delicious (or I liked it, I don't know the difference between those sentences) my favourite part was the rice cause I have not had seasoned rice wrapped in lotus leaf before.

A before picture...

YUM!

That thing in the middle is a slice of pumpkin that adds flavour to the rice! there are also beans and other leaves, most likely not basil. 

The pink and brown flower like things are flavoured lotus root (or stem, I don't exactly know)

An after picture with too much flash

An after picture with too little flash. Merge them in your minds.

I feel like I should have posted this earlier. In truth I started this post months ago but now that their is time pressure I'm gonna try to push out as many of my incomplete posts as possible. I'm better at starting things than seeing them through. 

I'm mostly ok. The homesickness passed like a bad flu. I seem back to my old spirits again. Still eager to come home, annoyed with Rerron and Ryan for aging without me (like they couldn't wait the 36 days it will take me to get home).

  

                                    36!

See you all really soon. Except of course those of you who have not responded to single email. I've written you guys off as bad friends and you'll have to pay a penalty fee to get back in my good graces. The fee will consist of a "traditional" meal from my culture so...macaroni and cheese or butter chicken or koolkos will do(you get the gist). I must be invited by phone call or sms (or mxit/whatsapp) and allowed to bring up to 3 friends of my choosing. If there is a single lotus root(stem) on the table I will double disown you and you'll have to beg Sinclair to convince me to leave you on our wedding guest list (or you can just not come... these penalties are made up, my mother wont really let me kick people out).

The point is, see you soon and you have to be nice to me when I see you :-)

Love from a distance
Vasti

homesickness

There is a tightness in my chest today that makes it feel like I will do nothing right. I have missed my bus and had to pay a lot of money for the taxi here. I had planned to start my week well, I haven’t. My apartment is dirty and my mind is messy. I feel on the brink of crying as I write this. I don’t know how honest I should be with my reading list, with you. I don’t know what people don’t want to know. I’ve never been good at knowing this, I mostly pretend it’s not important. I thought if I got back into my good habits the good feelings would follow. So I opened up this email and started writing. I still don’t know if I’ll click send.

Anyway. Homesickness is:
Feeling like you’re in the wrong place, at the wrong moment. Feeling like you’re going against the current of your fate.
It’s loneliness.
It’s the weird idea that physical distance constitutes much more than just physical distance.
Reaching out to people and feeling like you can’t feel them, or they can’t feel you.
Knowing with certainty that the only light you’ll find is waiting for you at home.

I don’t really know what homesickness is. That’s just what I’m feeling. I don’t even want to google it. I don’t want to have google tell me that homesickness is less severe or more severe than what I’m feeling. I don’t want to open my mind up to the idea that this is possibly more than homesickness. Maybe it’s... the awful darkness that has consumed me before. No. I don’t think it’s that. Better stay away from google, just in case.

Better spend my time lying in bed and watching Breaking Bad, The Mentalist, Supernatural. Focus on things that I can feel.

Anger that the crap series I watch all have male leads.
Anger at that I haven’t washed my dishes, none of my dishes are clean. Yesterday I drank milk out of the screw on cup thing that came with my blender. It was the last of my milk. This morning I was miserable about having to drink black coffee.
Misery. I guess I can feel misery.
Annoyance that misery comes so easily.
Sadness that Joy doesn’t come as easily as it used to.

Hey, at least I’m feeling stuff. Highs and lows right? Sometimes dark corners. Sometimes sadness. This is ok. Sadness is ok sometimes.

Maybe Homesickness is unfortunate idea that you don’t have to be sad if you’re at home. A problem that’s only really a problem when a far off ‘home’ is an option. When ‘home’ is a place other than where you lay your hat. Maybe I didn’t really have homesickness for the first year and 8 months cause I didn’t really allow myself the option of coming home. I came to Korea to pay off my debt. Now that I’ve done that. All of a sudden I don’t have to be here and so in my mind, ‘home’ shifted back to Cape Town. Maybe I’m just bored of Kimchi and children.

Anyway. I haven’t really been in the mood for writing. As you can see, all that comes out I this sludge. The gross stuff at the bottom of my mind. I don’t mind sharing it. I just don’t know if you mind receiving it.

It’s getting warmer. Less layers. No gloves. I’m not sick anymore. I was sick for the last two weeks.

I’ve got a roof over my head, food in my fridge, a job to keep me busy and people to love. I don’t really need anything, but i’d like to feel the sun on my face. The midday South African sun. Hot and gentle and harsh and yellow.

60 days. I’ll be home in 60 days.
I love you all