This is a caution: This is not intended to be a bad thing, just different to me. Therefore, I blog about it....haha.
Koreans are very close to their families. So from my understanding when you get around to eat, it's quite different then home. In America we all get our plates and we all pick our foods and we eat. We get a common plate but we use other specifically designed spoons and forks to place it on our dish.
Well, in Korea you don't do this. Here you have soup and various side dishes. You all eat out of the same plates. You take your chopsticks (Not to self i still don't know how to do that well...) or your spoon and you dig into whatever you want. This way you basically share the same plates and eat what you want.
In my school on the first day of school we also shared the dishes with all of the teachers. So everyone's chop sticks were in everyone's dishes.
The tradition says that it makes you closer. My only concern is that sanitary? I may have stolen food from my brother's plate a couple hundred times(Sorry...) but everyone out of one bowl? The only bowl that you get to your self is rice.
The same thing also happens in bars, kind of like our appetizers. I understand that, I don't however understand sharing my whole meal.
interesting...i find it ok to share a plate with friends and family, but strange people...i think i would feel pretty strange that some people i dont know eat from my plate.
ReplyDeletekind of makes you wonder...are we as Americians so self absorbed that we could never do such a thing, or that they as Koreans are so used to going without that they have found this may be the only way to eat....
ReplyDeleteIsn't that how germs and diseases are spread?? So if I had a cold, I would give my cold to everyone eating out of that bowl! Can't you just spoon some of the other food out of the community bowl and put it in your rice bowl? :)
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