Hot weather? Cool down with hot soup. Obviously.

by Jenn

The most popular food by far this week here in Korea is samgyetang, a chicken and ginseng stew that also has jujubes, sticky rice, garlic, and other ingredients. When I first heard about this dish, I thought "oh, that sounds like a nice meal for winter to warm you up." Imagine my surprise when I found out that it's used for just the opposite- to cool you down in the hottest days of summer. The theory is that hot soup inside your body will make the outside of your body feel cooler. I'm not sure I buy this, and, judging from the throngs of Koreans I see eating ice cream and cold noodle dishes, I'm not sure they do either. However, samgyetang is also supposed to replenish nutrients lost from sweating too much, and it's supposed to treat the lethargy that often accompanies these dog days. I prefer the Japanese idea of fighting summer fatigue with barbequed eel. Thank goodness they sell that here too!  Anyway, seeing as how we're in Korea, we decided to do what (some) Koreans do and fix a pot of samgyetang from a kit sold at our local grocery store. I enjoyed it. But maybe that's because the air conditioning made me a little chilly before I dug in...  It's tasty to be sure, but it certainly won't replace ice cream, watermelon, potato salad, or hot dogs as summer foods in my mind.


The past week has been pretty tough. We have been dealing with the bureaucracy of two offices of education since our schools are not under the same one. Yes, I know that makes no sense as we're in the same small city. As with so many things here, Western logic need not apply. One of the major problems we've been having is the fact that we're not really allowed to talk to anyone at either office directly despite the fact that they speak English; instead, we are supposed to ask our co-teacher something, who then asks the head of their department, who then relays it to the principal, who then contacts however many people at the respective office of education. It's a frustrating game of telephone, and someone, or several someones, don't seem to want to answer our questions. I have asked the same question three times and it is still unanswered. There are many other specific problems we're having that I'm not going to get into on here, but I will say that this has been an immensely stressful week. 


Adding to that stress is the existence of racist, "foreigner"-hating Koreans working within this system. The Korean government wants at least one native English speaking teacher in each public school throughout the country, but there are many people in the individual offices of education who are, well, racist. And they make sure you know it, too. Jackasses like that need to find another job. Can you imagine someone in the U.S. telling another person in their company "No, I'm not doing that because I'm sick and tired of being a f*ing slave to all these f*ing foreigners."  And all we asked was something that is promised as part of our contract. I've never been treated with such unmasked racism in Asia. Frankly, I don't know whether I'm more astonished that so many of these people are in positions where they work with "foreigners" (note: I hate that word.), or that it's completely acceptable.