Yes, I am well aware that the phrase is ‘the world is your oyster’ rather than lobster, but all will be explained I assure you.
The school in which I work is attached to an adjacent school by an office/corridor/bridge sort of thing, whereby we may pass from one building to the other, for the purposes of using the comedor (dining room) of the boarding school next door. The food provided by the catering staff at our adjacent school is unparalleled in my experience of school food. However my experience of school foods is somewhat limited, having only ever attended one school before going to University, and although the food I was given at school in my teen years was fairly good considering the budget available, it doesn’t hold a candle to the standard of food served here. And considering I eat for free here, it tastes all the better.
Today saw the arrival of a contingent of English school children from a school in Didsbury near Manchester in Northern England. Our two schools have an intercambio (exchange programme) between them and as such we shall be sending a troupe of 10 year old ambassadors to Manchester next month, whom I am to accompany as a native speaker. Due to the special circumstances of the day, the kitchen staff decided to flex their culinary muscles and serve a Galician banquet to welcome the arrival of the Englishmen. From the start I have been suprised by the quality of food I am served here, yet today saw me gobsmacked and my mouth watering like crazy. Some of the other teachers were slightly nervous that the English kids would be too fussy about their food and pick and nibble at things but leaving the vast majority of the food behind, yet that was not to pass.
Under normal circumstances when on lunch duty and collecting the serving trays of food one can expect the Spanish children to dish out the food onto their own plates, then leave at least a third of the food provided on the serving tray behind. This is good news for the other teachers and I as it means there is often a reasonable amount of free food going spare to be picked at while waiting for the children to finish and clear the tables. Today however proved to be an exception. The dish of the day was Churrasco, a dish (when served at school) consisting of grilled ribs with Chorizo sausage and a skipful of chips per person. I’m quite a fan of nice food, and was rather looking forward to having lots of spare ribs (pun intended) to pick at as the children couldn’t possibly eat all the food we set out for them… could they?
After I collected the 9th totally empty tray from the table I started to wonder. Much to my disappointment the children between them saw off every single tray provided leaving nothing for me to pick at while waiting for them to finish their deserts. Although I was then fed copious amounts of the glorious meal when dining with the secondary school, it was not lost on me how the children from the UK immediately dove into the food as if they hadn’t eaten in weeks. I had been expecting some whinging and complaining from them about not liking the food as it wasn’t a fried fish with mushy peas, but they really surprised me, which I’m proud to admit.
Monday’s meal shall be seafood, a repeat of the last time we had a large celebratory meal so I’m hoping that the English students will maintain their current attitude. The world is indeed their lobster (to be served on Monday) and is also theirs to conquer. The intercambio is a fantastic way to improve the language skills of both groups of children. The Spanish youth have all been speaking today is nothing but English, and I have barely heard a single word in English from any of the children from Manchester. With language skills as good as theirs at such young ages, there’s no real limit to what they could achieve in the future.
Best of luck to them all, now get out there and catch that lobster… sorry, i mean oyster…
The Rain in Spain... 
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