Farewell from Korea!

Today is our last post. Thank you for all the comments and questions about Korean food and school. This has made our week a lot of fun. We are so happy that people are interested in Korea. Our class is sad we will not post anymore but we will ask our teacher to read more posts from the world and from Veg.

Today we had a good lunch. Like everyday we had rice (밥 bap) and the soup was kimchi stew (김치찌개 kimchi jjigae). This soup has kimchi, pork, and a little bit of other vegetables. Then we had tofu (두부 dubu) with soy sauce, kimchi (김치), and fried dried seaweed (김자반 무침 kimjaban muchim). Today we had a sweet thing at the end of the meal called 떡 (tteok). It is a sweet rice cake that is very sticky.

Food-o-meter- 9/10
Health rating- 9/10
Bites- about 61 on average
Courses- Soup, 3 sides, dessert
Price- About 2,500 won ($2.50 US)
Pieces of hair- 0 (everyday!)

Goodbye and thank you for reading our posts.

Teacher’s Note: Sorry the post from the kids is so short today, we were busy catching up on work missed due to the typhoon day we had earlier this week. My students really enjoyed hearing from everyone who commented, so I thank you all! It was a great week.

I will not answer some of the final questions that we didn’t get to in class today. Chopsticks and spoons are used in Korea almost exclusively. There are forks and knives in western restaurants but chopsticks are always offered, too! I’ve gotten quite good at them since I arrived :) There is no reason to switch over to the knife, fork, spoon tradition of the west. For Koreans (and I’m sure the rest of Asia), using chopsticks is second nature and just as easy for them as using a fork is to the west!

There are a lot of Korean sweets and western influenced desserts, but we don’t eat them often at school. Rice cakes (like the one we had today) are the most popular and are sometimes filled with things like sweet red beans or sesame oil. Dairy is not really part of the traditional diet in Korea, like other east Asian countries which is why you rarely see it in Korean food.

Thank you all again for such a great week. I urge all of you who are interested in Korean food to go out and try it (or challenge yourself to cooking it!) and donate to Mary’s Meals. Let’s support Veg and her truly outstanding project! Lastly, for those interested in life in Korea and Korean food you can find out more at my blog.

Hello again from Dae Han Min Guk!

한식 (do you remember how to say our name in English?) here again. Dae Han Min Guk
(대한민국) is the name of Korea in Korean! Today here it is very rainy. They say we have a typhoon coming again! We hope that Veg and family is okay after the lightning strike. And that everyone in US is okay after hurricane there.

To answer your question, mostly in Korea women cook. Men work very long hours at the
company and get home very late, so women cook dinner. It isn’t that hard always because rice is made in rice cooker and kimchi is made only a few times a year with the whole family or you can buy. We aren’t sure why we use metal chopsticks here, it is just normal for us!

Today’s lunch was white rice (밥 bap), salad, fried shrimp patties with ketchup, kimchi, and gamjatang (감자탕). Gamjatang is a soup with pork bones and potatoes. The meat is on the bones (from the neck) and you need to scrape it off. It is little bit spicy.

Food-o-meter- 7/10
Health rating- 7/10
Bites- about 46 on average
Courses- Main, Soup, 2 sides
Price- About 2,500 won ($2.50 US)
Pieces of hair- 0, again

If you have any other question please ask today because tomorrow is sadly our last day to post ㅠㅠ (This is the cry sign in Korean).

Hansik is back!

Sorry about missing yesterday but today we are back at school. The storm was not very bad. We were very happy to get a day off school and spent most of the time playing and sleeping. Everyone is tired today. There is another typhoon coming tomorrow but they don’t think it will be very bad.

We are happy that everyone likes these posts. Korean food is very delicious and we hope that more people in the world will try it. Today’s lunch was good. Wednesday is a special lunch day. They serve special things like rice porridge or curry.

Today we had fried rice with dried seaweed on top (볶음밥 with 김, bokkeumbap with kim),
soybean paste stew with green pumpkin, mushrooms, and potatoes in it (된장 찌개, doenjang
jjigae), radish kimchi (깍두기, kkakdugi), corn and cheese casserole, and grapes.

Food-o-meter- 8/10
Health rating- 7/10 (there was a lot of cheese)
Bites- about 55 on average
Courses- Main, Soup, 3 sides
Price- About 2,500 won ($2.50 US)
Pieces of hair- 0!

People had a question about breakfast in Korea. We usually eat the same food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This is rice, soup, kimchi and other small things like tofu, egg, ham, or beans. Sometimes we eat cereal or breads.

Thank you for reading. We like seeing your comments and answering your questions about
Korea!

Teacher’s Note: To answer some of the other questions from the last post I will jump in. The dumplings in the back of the picture are called kimchi mandu. Mandu (민두) is the Korean word for dumpling. I teach just English (writing) but other native English teachers at my school teach science, math, social studies, and reading. It is a wonderful opportunity!

There is a lot of access to junk and western food here. McDonalds, Burger King, Papa John’s, Domino’s, and Baskin Robbins (to name a few) all have stores here and are very popular. But, from what I’ve seen and what students have told me, these are eaten much less regularly than in the US. Koreans still place a big emphasis on family, so meals are often home cooked or still Korean. Other things are seen as a treat. Obviously, this is not the case in all Korean families but seems to be more common.

There are a lot of options for delivery and take away here. Korea is very convenient. When you order from Korean restaurants they bring everything in glass and metal. Once you are done eating you place it outside your door and the restaurant will come and pick it back up. Besides Korean food, you can order delivery from just about anywhere, even McDonalds! Fried chicken, often tossed in a spicy sauce and incredibly common in Korea, and pizza are popular choices.

When asked my students all said they like western food sometimes but that they prefer Korean!

안녕하세요! Annyeonghaseyo!

Hello again from Seoul! Today’s blog post is going to be a little different. As you know the posts on NeverSeconds are usually written by children, but today I (Hansik’s teacher) am going to be
taking the reins. Why? Because Korea is currently preparing to be hit by Typhoon Bolaven and the kids were told not to come to school today. While teachers still have to report on the outset of this hurricane, the cafeteria is closed. I’ll take this opportunity to tell you a little bit more about a typical Korean snack or lunch when not at school.

First off, I am an American who has been living in Korea for the past 18 months. I work at an immersion school so the students spend half the day studying the national curriculum with their Korean homeroom teacher and half the day studying core subject in English with a native English speaker. I’m the writing teacher so this project fits perfectly.

In Korea, teachers eat with their students. We eat the same food but are able to serve
ourselves. I pay 50,000 won (about $50 US) a month which is a great deal. I actually love most of the food in the cafeteria!

Now for the food! One of the most popular quick meals or snacks in Korea is called kimbap, or in Korean, 김밥. Also called the “Korean sandwich” due to the fact kimbap is often brought as a lunch on hikes or field trips, kimbap looks like a Japanese sushi roll, but it is actually very different. Yesterday we learned that kim (김), the first syllable of the word, is dried seaweed. Well, the second syllable, bap (밥), means rice.

Like sushi it is rice and seaweed rolled, but the similarities end there. The most common variety is filled with egg, ham, cucumber, carrot, and pickled radish (danmuji, 단무지). You can also order kimbap with other ingredients including cheese, kimchi, or, my favorite, canned tuna with mayonnaise. It sounds weird at first, but once you get used to kimbap, it is delicious. A roll runs about 2,000 won ($2 US) and is available at convenience stores and take away shops around the country.

One final thing before I go. Although it is a little scary here in Korea today with this impending storm, I know that I will still have access to food and a hot meal. Let’s make sure everyone who can donates to Mary’s Meals so that this can be a reality for more people across the world!

That’s it from Korea today! Hopefully the students will be back tomorrow with another school lunch for you all. If you have any questions about food, lunches, or education in South Korea please ask and I’ll have the students get you some answers.

Hello from South Korea!

We are in 6th grade at elementary school in Seoul. You can call us Hansik (한식). This means Korea food. We study half the day in Korean and half the day in English at our school. It is private school so we pay for lunch but at public school in Seoul all student get free lunch.

We eat lunch at 12pm everyday in the cafeteria. Everyday there is rice, soup, a main dish, and some side dishes. We can drink water if we want. On some special day there is juice. We have to eat everything before we can go. We can have more food if we want. We don’t like many of the food in the cafeteria. Our favorites are fried chicken and noodle soup.

Today’s lunch was white rice, spinach soybean paste soup (시금치 된장국, sigeumchi doenjangguk), kimchi (김치 it is cabbage fermented with spicy red sauce), kim (김 dried seaweed), and dwaeji bulgogi (돼지 불고기) was the main dish. Dwaeji bulgogi is pork, spicy red sauce, and cabbage. It is kind of like stiry fry.

Food-o-meter- 7/10
Health rating- 9/10 (Korean food is healthy)
Bites- (Teacher’s Note: I forgot to tell them to count! I’ll remind them tomorrow!)
Courses- Main, Soup, 2 sides
Price- About 2,500 won ($2.50 US)
Pieces of hair- 0!

(Teacher’s Note for the picture: The students are not allowed cameras or phones during school hours so I took the picture. Because of this, the portion size is slightly larger than what is given to the students.)

We were very happy when we learned about Mary’s Meals. In our school we have a market one time a year. We sell things we make and give the money to an orphanage. We think it is very important that kids help other kids.

We are Finalists!

Hi Hungry Birds! Veg here.

Thank you for sharing your lunches. Our dinners are very expensive because they cost £2.05p. That's 2.60 euros. I think a lot more children would have our school dinners if they were free. Parents would make us have them even if we didn't like them. Your soup was lovely and I can't believe you gave it the lowest score. That's mean!

I had some broccoli and greens from the polytunnel to use today so I made soup with garlic and a little cheese. I used the garlic because we had no onions ready. Even Dad had seconds and he scores soup low like you normally.

I wanted to try one of your dinners and so your teacher shared a recipe. It is for your chicken and pasta casserole that you had on Thursday. You scored it,

Food-o-meter: 10/10
Health rating: 8/10

Your recipe was very easy to follow but we never use dl, decilitres, in our recipes we say 100ml. Dad and I followed your instructions and we used honey from our own bees on the chicken as well.

Ours sauce looked much runnier, less thick, than yours but it was delicious! You can see we didn't have carrots ready either so we boiled some sweetcorn. I rate,

Food-o-metre: 10/10
Health Rating: 9/10

It has everything you want in it because it has protein, carbohydrates and lots of veg as well. I was full after mine and I didn't have dessert. I will post the recipe.

I found out last week I am in the final of the Great Scot Award! You can see the finalists here. It's great there is a guide dog and hospital clowns in the finals. It is a shame I won't meet them but my aunt and maybe my granny are going so they will. I will be asleep in Malawi because we are 2 hours ahead. I am waiting for news of the Friends of NeverSeconds kitchen. I hope they will be using it soon!

Next week we are going to spend a week in Seoul, South Korea (14 seconds. I must show you my globe soon!). I would like to cook a meal from Seoul as well next weekend. It's great trying different recipes. I don't think I will be able to use chopsticks but I want to learn.

33 days until Malawi!

Veg

Hungry Birds once more!

Hei kaikille! Nälkäiset linnut ovat täällä viimeistä kertaa. Tällä
viikolla olemme oppineet monia asioita ruoasta. Tämä viikko on monella
tapaa muuttanut suhtautumistamme ja mielipiteitämme kouluruokaan.
Ymmärrämme nyt paremmin, että olemme hyvin erityisessä asemassa
kun saamme joka päivä ilmaisen ja terveellisen koululounaan. Ja
rehellisesti sanoen, koulumme ruoka jopa maistuu hyvälle. Joskus vain
kun ruokaan suhtautuu negatiivisesti, se alkaa myös maistua pahalta.
Meillä ei ollut aikaisemmin mitään käsitystä siitä, että niin monet
joutuvat maksamaan kouluruoastaa tai että niin monilla ei ole edes
mahdollisuutta siihen. Joskus ajattelimme, että olisi parempi jos
voisimme ottaa kouluun omat eväät. Enää emme niin ajattele. Haluamme
kiittää Vegiä ja hänen isäänsä mahdollisuudesta osallistua tähän
blogiin. Olemme pitäneet tästä viikosta paljon. Toivomme, että matkanne
Malawiin onnistuu ja näemme paljon kuvia sieltä. Odotamme myös
mielenkiinnolla seuraavien koulujen vierailuja täällä.

Jos tämä viikko on ollut erilainen, niin on myös ensi viikko. Olemme
leirikoulussa Pohjois-Karjalassa. Pohjois-Karjala on osa itäistä Suomea
lähellä Venäjän rajaa. Leirikoulussa mm. vaellamme Kolilla, melomme,
kiipeilemme ja tietysti uimme Pielisessä ja saunomme. Leirikouluamme voi
seurata blogistamme. Lisäämme sinne ensi tiistaista alkaen kuvia ja
kertomuksia leirikoulun kulusta. Leirikoulublogiin pääset tästä:
http://otavanleirikoulu2012.blogspot.com

Tänään ruokana oli kaalipataa, puolukkahilloa ja salaattia. Pidimme
salaatista. Siinä oli kurkkua, viinirypäleitä ja raejuustoa.
Kaalilaatikko on ruoka josta joko pitää tai ei pidä. Useimmat meistä
pitivät ruoasta, mutta osa meistä ei voi sietää kaaliruokia.
Puolukkahillo ei ollut kovin makeaa. Sitä käytetään Suomessa usein
perinteisten ruokien kanssa.

Hello World! This is the last time of the Hungry Birds. In this week we
have learned lot of new things about the food we eat. This week have
changed our attitudes and opinions for our school lunch. We think that
we understand now better that we are in a very special position when we
get a free and healthy meal during our school day. And after all if we
are honest our school meals are quite tasty. Sometimes when just being
so negative about the food it starts to taste bad. We didn't have any
idea that so many children have to pay their school meals. Also we
didn't understand that there is some many children that don't even have
a change to get their lunch at school. Sometimes we have thought that it
would be better if we could bring our own lunch boxes to school but not
any more. We want to thank Veg and her dad to give us this opportunity
to be a part of this blog. We liked this week very much. We hope your
trip to Malawi will be successful. It would be nice to see pictures
there. We also wait to see next schools blogging here.

If this week has been a little different our next week will also be
anything but normal school week. We are going to school camp to Northern
Carelia. North Carelia is one part of eastern Finland just beside the
Russian border. Next week we are going tofor example do some hiking at
Koli, learn some canoeing, do some climbing, swim in lake Pielinen and
of course because we are from Finland have a sauna every day. If you
want you can follow our school camp on our blog. Yet there isn't much to
see but after next Tuesday we will be sending there pictures and stories
during our school camp. You can find our blog here:
http://otavanleirikoulu2012.blogspot.com

Today our lunch was cabbage stew with lingonberry jam and salad. We
liked the salad.

It was made from salad, cucumber, grapes and cottage
cheese. The cabbage stew is a dish that you either like or hate. Most of
us liked it but some of us can't stand foods which includes cooked
cabbage. The lingonberry jam isn't very sweet. In Finland it is used
with many traditional foods.

Food-o-meter: 7/10
Mouthfuls: 28
Courses: main
Health Rating: 9/10
Price: 0e
Pieces of hair: 0

Hungry Birds are saying now thank you and goodbye! Or like we say in
Finnish: Moi moi!


Hungry birds teacher here once more... This week with this blog has been
a great success. It has been wonderful to see how my pupils attitudes
and opinions have changed in few days. Last week when we talked about
our lunch it was just tasting bad. Instead of learning maths or other
subjects we have spent lot of time for blogging here and talking about
the food but I think it all was worth it. I also have to thank Veg and
her dad giving us this opportunity. You are doing great work and I hope
you can keep this up. You never know what kind of influences a small
acts like your blog can reach.