Normally, I would never complain about my middle school lunch that I eat in the school's community teacher room. For roughly four dollars (Cad.) I get to eat unlimited rice, some sort of protein (beef, pork, or chicken) a soup of some sorts, and usually more side-dishes of kimchi than I can shake a stick at. Its not the best and greatest lunch, but they do a much better job of making lunch than I could, and not having to bring a lunch with me everyday is quite nice.
What was interesting to me however was when one of my co-teachers brought up the subject of the school's nutritionist. Growing up in a private school, we didn't have a cafeteria where we could buy a daily lunch; instead, we all brown-bagged it. Over here in Korea, the school forces the parents to buy the school's prepared lunch, and then each class has their own lunch cart, which they wheel to their classroom, to eat all together in their homeroom class. Along with organizing the school's menu, the nutritionist counts all of the calories in the meals, and writes everything out, all the ingredients, everything that's scheduled to be used in cooking the food. That part was not too surprising.
However, the surprising news was that each school fights fiercely for highly regarded nutritionists who cook good tasting meals. Each school is in charge of paying for their own school's nutritionist. For the past two years prior to my arrival at my school, the school lunch tasted awful, so they fired her. They asked around, and found out that another school had a highly regarded nutritionist at their school. So my school ended up courting, and negotiating her to leave her school, and come to our school. This set off a chain reaction, of that school hiring another school's nutritionist, and so forth. It's all supposed to be very hush-hush, quiet. The parents want their children to eat good tasting food - the girls especially almost refuse to eat anything unless it tastes good, so the parents want good tasting food, so their children eat. I found out that we had to pay a hefty salary raise to get our nutritionist, and compared to before, I'm eating five-star food for lunch.
It's all quite interesting, and just another way that schools here are quite different (from my understanding) compared to back home.
don't work too hard,