Ode to the Mocha Gold

For those of us in Korea, the very combination of the words mocha and gold probably provoke any number of thoughts. Perhaps it's "can't live without it!" Maybe it's "ugh--get that out of my face!" Regardless, Mocha Gold--and many other sachet coffees--constitute a big part of school life. The boxes and sachets of the stuff sit on most every teachers office or classroom in this country it seems. It's called coffee mix, but it tastes more like sweetened milk with a few coffee grounds tossed in for appearances.

Teachers at my school drink these over sugared confections by the caseload. See that picture below? 3 of the 5 of us in my office go through a box like that every week and a half. I'm convinced that several teachers drink nothing but coffee mixes every day because they never seem to drink anything else or even talk about anything else. They drink it before the first class, after lunch, and one or more times at various intervals throughout the day.

The recent cold snap's brought about. a sharp increase in "coffee" consumption with teachers running for the stuff as soon as they come in from the cold hallways. They anxiously heat the water and pour another round of their paper cup confections before they clutch them like lifelines to their parched lips and scurry back to their desks.


To the readers: what are you thoughts on coffee mixes? How often do you drink it?

*I watch this ritual unfold every day and wonder how someone can ingest that much sugar. Then again, even if I don't think too much of the stuff, it makes one hell of a soju bomb. The sweetness perfectly offsets the alcohol.

**And if not in sachets, coffee mix dispensers sit in plenty of restaurants, shops, and banks across the land. They're everywhere.