My New Grub Club

My office sits 5 of us--a math teacher (the mama), an ethics teacher (the one male), two of my co-teachers (both close to my age--one single, one is married with a 2 year old), and me.

The office is cute. Small, but good, because in the big offices, you obviously get way more teachers.

It's pretty great. We have rituals. Boombox playing either sountrack to "Miss Saigon" or "pop classics" in which Koreans have remade their versions of American adult contemporary "classics". Think Chicago. Someone always buys apples or oranges, cucumbers, and carrots, and little drinks with plenty of vitamin-C (they're always stuffing the C down my throat) and little crackers. Jin-Sook also has this magical little egg-steamer that hard-boils eggs in 8 minutes.

Since the weather turned sunny, we've been doing a weekly lunch together on the days we all have 5th period off--one where we don't go to the cafeteria. We huddle next to the windows, eat our cut fruits and veggies, then walk arm-in-arm for coffee on campus. And then Jeong-Eun helps me with my Korean homework.

Or we go off-campus, all piled into one tiny car with a baby-seat. One time, Chinese. This week we went for spaghetti. I had this amazingly light spaghetti with bulgogi and clams; there was a spicy risotto, and a soupy spaghetti they claim "cures the soju hangover." We talk over (what I call) the auto-appetizer--Korean restaurants bring food automatically, when you sit down--which at this restaurant happens to be colored marshmallows with a burner to "warm it up" and I tell them, while they listen intently, about the magic of s'mores.

It's not my Chicago Grub Club, but we are focusing on other ethnic foods. And, I am missing my Jews and the Jew-sian jokes, and of course the food, but I think I can handle our little office parties for a while.