Lunch

Forget Lunchables or squished peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, my students in Bhutan go all out when it comes to packed lunch. As students walk to school, you usually see them carrying a school bag and either a hard plastic lunch case or a plastic basket carrying their lunch case and bowls and cups. Sometimes you can even spot two people carrying one of these lunch baskets, each person carrying a handle of it, the weight of the lunch too much for a single child. Instead of bringing boring old dinner leftovers for lunch, mothers here will usually cook a brand new dish in the morning for their children to pack for lunch. These hard lunch cases contain a bottom compartment for warm rice and pull out compartments for various curries. Students will sit in small groups and sample spoonfuls from each other’s lunches.

The couple times I’ve stayed at school for lunch instead of walking home, I’ve felt out of place and awkward without one of these fancy hard lunch cases. I pull out my basic tupperware with a pink lid and feel inferior. But the students don’t treat me that way. They push spoonfuls of their curries on me and insist I take a sip from their bottle of coke. They are even gracious enough to try the spoonfuls of my boring old dinner leftovers that I, in turn, push on them.