Wednesday, 04 June 2008

Chopsticks rule my plate.

Another strange lunch session just finished. We had chicken schnitzel, at least that is the best way to describe it. The first thing I saw when walking in to the cafeteria, however, was FRESH SALAD. I loooove salad, but in Korea they rarely serve it.

Here is the kicker for the salad though. The dressing for the salad was orange juice. I don’t mean a dash of dressing that contains orange juice; I mean 100% orange juice, with the little bits floating around and everything. I even saw them pour it out of the bottles in to the big serving bowl at one point.

I already mentioned the hilarity of Koreans using knives and forks when eating dongkasu, so I leave that alone today. But a problem with knifes and forks are that they don’t work well for things like sticky rice. The rice forms little balls that are just the right size to fall off your fork. And we all know how difficult it can be to keep salad on your fork. Many foreigners here have taken to eating salad with chopsticks. Kimchi is also already sliced in to little bite sized bit, so again the chopsticks are king.

Considering that I had salad, sticky rice and kimchi on my plate, it was obvious to me what I should do. Imagine, however, the surprise of the teachers around me when, after cutting my meat, I stood up and asked for chopsticks. While they were all suffering with forks I, the foreigner, was happily eating my food the “traditional” way.

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