I am from the Northwest. Born and raised, I love the rain. I love, love, love, love, love, love, love, LOVE the rain! The rain is so soothing! The sound of it as it grows from a silencing mist to a pitter of small drops to a rumble of larger ones on the roof, then the splats as it falls off the edges of the gutters on to the cement, and then the inconsistent plops as the clouds fade away, but the water remains and runs down into the dirt or drains or wherever. And then the smell! Did you know it has a word?? Petrichor. Look it up. I learned it on Doctor Who. Yay for British Sci-Fi!!!! (But seriously, Doctor Who is AWESOME)
So anyways, it rained today here. Normally it's either dry and cold, or snowy and cold, and I've been told it's supposed to be even more snowy and cold than it's been this time of year, but today it was like 40's and raining! Very NW weathery. I felt nostalgic, and gave up my normal super warm eskimo coats for a super West Coast represent hoodie. And of course, I did not use an umbrella! Because umbrellas are for wimps when it's not raining hard enough to make them useless anyways. Hahaha. (It was only misting anyways, but I still saw people with umbrellas and hoods up! Haha!)
There aren't too many other people from the Northwest here, but one of my good friends is and as I was putting up news posters around the dorm she came in from the outside, SOPPING WET. Hahaha. (It apparently started to rain a lot harder after I'd gone inside a few hours earlier). We laughed for a bit and then she had the greatest idea ever, "Hey, do you want to go out and have a mud fight?" Hehehehe.
Mud fights are wonderful. It was really hard to find good mud, but eventually we found something that'd work and went at it for long enough to cover us with mud. Hahaha! So much fun!!! But it was getting colder, so we were freezing and decided to go take some hot showers, and then regroup in the common room for tea. :)
Because tea always just adds an extra perfect touch that finishes off a great evening of mud flinging on a Friday evening. ^^
Friday, February 24, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Midterms
I just had a Calculus I exam today, and will be having a Biology exam tomorrow, in addition to a History paper being due on Sunday, and a Macroeconomics exam on Monday, so I'm kind of busy studying right now and don't have much time to post anything new. I got my first gaiwan about two days ago though, so I have some fun pictures and writing about that, but not much time to go into it really, so I'll just leave you all with this for today.
http://media.skysurvey.org/interactive360/index.html
This is the coolest thing in the world. I love stargazing so this is going to now be my new thing to do in the day. I don't know how it really started, but I really love to go out and look at the stars. Doesn't everyone? But one night here I decided that my coat was warm enough and the ground was frozen so I wasn't going to get mud on my coat, so it'd be good night to just lay down in the grass and stare at the stars. I was just coming home at like 9pm at night too from turning in a paper in person two minutes before it was due or something. Haha. But it was really awesome, I saw a lot of shooting stars, and so I've done it two more times since, and plan to keep on doing it now. :) Some people think I'm crazy, but I love looking at the stars and there's no better way to do it than to just lay down and look up. Who cares if it's below freezing? I only stay out for like an hour at a time. Haha.
Have fun, and wish me luck!
http://media.skysurvey.org/interactive360/index.html
This is the coolest thing in the world. I love stargazing so this is going to now be my new thing to do in the day. I don't know how it really started, but I really love to go out and look at the stars. Doesn't everyone? But one night here I decided that my coat was warm enough and the ground was frozen so I wasn't going to get mud on my coat, so it'd be good night to just lay down in the grass and stare at the stars. I was just coming home at like 9pm at night too from turning in a paper in person two minutes before it was due or something. Haha. But it was really awesome, I saw a lot of shooting stars, and so I've done it two more times since, and plan to keep on doing it now. :) Some people think I'm crazy, but I love looking at the stars and there's no better way to do it than to just lay down and look up. Who cares if it's below freezing? I only stay out for like an hour at a time. Haha.
Have fun, and wish me luck!
Friday, February 17, 2012
Yeah, Yixing Teapot!
I've been really curious for a long time what effect brewing tea in a clay teapot had on the flavor of the tea. Certainly it made me feel a lot more special, and I enjoyed my tea more, but I wasn't really interested in drinking two full pots (albeit small pots haha) of tea so I'll wait for some time next week when my friend whom I think I might have hooked on pu-erh (which is only what I'm going to use in this pot) comes back from afar. I would say that my tea tasted better than usual, but it's REALLY good pu-erh (LongRun's 2898) already, and I just recently read an article about how people couldn't tell the difference between dog food and some french dish when it was dressed up properly... Haha. So I will do a blind taste test on myself here soon, brewing it in both the Yixing and ceramic teapots. Certainly though, when I put hot water in the yixing teapot, WOW. What a SUPER earthy smell!!! Geez! It was like I had my face pressed to a wet forest floor! Hahahaha. It smelled great. I also had my roommates smell it, and they were shocked that a teapot could smell like that. Hehehe. I love introducing people to new things about tea.
Which apparently I need to do even more of. Yesterday, I decided it would be a good idea to eat some chocolate cake. This was an actual thing I had to think about for a few seconds, because I really dislike chocolate. I love chocolate milk, but actual chocolate gives me a headache and really upsets my stomach. I have a legitimate reason for disliking chocolate!!! Stop hating on me!!! Hahaha. You have no idea how hard it is to go to a woman's college and dislike chocolate. But anyways, I said this, and one of my friends started hating on me. So I told her I had this great tea (2898 again) that tasted a lot like it (it's so THICK and has a really sweet and dark earthyness) and suggested that she should try it. Then, she had to go and say the most nonsensical sentence ever that way too many people say all the time:
"I don't like tea."
BULL FREAKING S****.
The best tea people who say crap like that have ever had was either Lipton or whatever they just willy-nilly serve at Chinese restaurants (I'm assuming it's most commonly an oolong). Their green tea was always probably burnt, and well, I'd say their black tea was over brewed or something, but I don't really like black teas at all in general unless they have a ton of milk and sugar in them (a sin, I know!!). Haha. But they've definitely never had a quality Dan Cong oolong that tastes like honeysuckle, the new Purple Tea, Gyokuro made over ice, or one of the owner of New Century Tea Gallery's green teas from his family farm (not all on linked page are from his family's farm) or Moon White Pu-erh. HONESTLY. Just because you've had some stupid Lipton tea, or some super sugared up Snapple iced tea does not qualify you to say you dislike all tea!!!!!! AT ALL. GAH.
Also, I can't tell if I have a perfect opportunity to help change a bit of this right now or not haha. I was offered a chance to run a tea tasting event for a club fundraising event on campus today, but then the girl started talking about flowers and spices and I realized she (and so many other people) just lump all "tea" in one word and consider any other dried plant piece that you can put in water and drink as what gives tea its flavor. *SIGHS* We'll be discussing this further. To do anything though, I'd either need more gaiwans/pots and cups, or at the very least more strainers. Technically I have a ton of little tea bags you can use to make yourself, but tea bags suck. A lot. I tried making Gyokuro in them once. I would have gotten better results from holding them down with a spoon. Hahaha. It was like there was no infusion! So disappointing. So yeah, I think tea bags are a bad idea. I suggested we do a chai event, but again we'll have to discuss and think this through further.
Watch out for my next post, I have time this weekend to read and analyze a few scientific articles. Comment with suggestions about what you'd like to know about tea if you'd like and I'll see what I can find. :)
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Welcome to College Tea Time!
Hello everyone,
My name is Miss Myr and I'm an extremely proud student at Mount Holyoke College who is a true aspiring loose leaf tea connoisseur. I first discovered the delights of loose leaf tea a little under three years ago on a high school choir tour of Victoria and Vancouver in Canada. We stopped for a small performance and visit at the Vancouver Chinese Garden, where in the store I found a bunch of absolutely adorable little tin boxes. They were so cute! I noticed that there was tea in them, and so I got a nice Jasmine one that I knew I'd like, and then noticed one that I'd never heard of before: "Pu-erh". "'Pu-erh'? What on earth could that be?" I wondered. And so I bought it. Some of the best things in life come from following your curiosity, and this was definitely one of them. I tried this tea, and it was so delicious!!!! I was shocked! I'd never had such delicious tea in my entire life!!! Then I started doing research on it online, and discovered that it was basically the best tea ever for a student, because you didn't have to care about the temperature of the water and could more or less steep it for an indefinite period of time (unlike the super finicky green teas). Thus started my journey into the world of fine tea.
Now, nearly three years later, I attend the oldest women's college in the United States, Mount Holyoke College. It's a paradise here. I absolutely love it. The academics are challenging and rewarding, the students interesting and extremely diverse, the professors approachable and caring, the policies and respect for students high and comforting, the dorms homey and beautiful, the campus huge and stunning, and there are so many things to do!!! It's crazy. Four years will not be enough here. Haha. But also while I'm here, I really want to introduce quality tea to all my friends and acquaintances here. It was really funny because when I first found out who my roommates were going to be and was in the process of emailing them, one of them told me she liked tea too. Then we met and she now laughs basically every time she looks at my collection and refuses to show me her's because she didn't realize just how much I loved tea. Hahaha. I have so much tea ware and tea. And hopefully I'll be getting even more soon! Hehe. Drinking tea every day really depletes your supplies, you know? Now if you know anything about tea you might think, well, it doesn't deplete it that much if you get all the brews you can out of your leaves. But I do! Part of my problem is that I share my tea. Hahaha. I have some really good brews that I just love to share by grabbing people from my dorm's common room and being all "Hey! Get in here and have a cup of this!" It's lots of fun, and then my friends leave with a new appreciation for tea which is the best thing ever. <3 Spawn my tea addict minions! Spawn! Just kidding. Hahaha.
The purpose of this blog is to post about various aspects of tea and being a young tea connoisseur in college. I hope that this will reach a lot of my friends here at Mount Holyoke and anyone else in college or interested in tea!
By the way, my posts may not be too frequent. I DO go to Mount Holyoke College, number stupid freaking 12 on the list of most rigorous colleges in the US, 5 rankings above Harvard College. Haha. Why do I go here again? Oh right, I actually wanted this kind of academic rigor. Haha. (Sighs) :)
My name is Miss Myr and I'm an extremely proud student at Mount Holyoke College who is a true aspiring loose leaf tea connoisseur. I first discovered the delights of loose leaf tea a little under three years ago on a high school choir tour of Victoria and Vancouver in Canada. We stopped for a small performance and visit at the Vancouver Chinese Garden, where in the store I found a bunch of absolutely adorable little tin boxes. They were so cute! I noticed that there was tea in them, and so I got a nice Jasmine one that I knew I'd like, and then noticed one that I'd never heard of before: "Pu-erh". "'Pu-erh'? What on earth could that be?" I wondered. And so I bought it. Some of the best things in life come from following your curiosity, and this was definitely one of them. I tried this tea, and it was so delicious!!!! I was shocked! I'd never had such delicious tea in my entire life!!! Then I started doing research on it online, and discovered that it was basically the best tea ever for a student, because you didn't have to care about the temperature of the water and could more or less steep it for an indefinite period of time (unlike the super finicky green teas). Thus started my journey into the world of fine tea.
Now, nearly three years later, I attend the oldest women's college in the United States, Mount Holyoke College. It's a paradise here. I absolutely love it. The academics are challenging and rewarding, the students interesting and extremely diverse, the professors approachable and caring, the policies and respect for students high and comforting, the dorms homey and beautiful, the campus huge and stunning, and there are so many things to do!!! It's crazy. Four years will not be enough here. Haha. But also while I'm here, I really want to introduce quality tea to all my friends and acquaintances here. It was really funny because when I first found out who my roommates were going to be and was in the process of emailing them, one of them told me she liked tea too. Then we met and she now laughs basically every time she looks at my collection and refuses to show me her's because she didn't realize just how much I loved tea. Hahaha. I have so much tea ware and tea. And hopefully I'll be getting even more soon! Hehe. Drinking tea every day really depletes your supplies, you know? Now if you know anything about tea you might think, well, it doesn't deplete it that much if you get all the brews you can out of your leaves. But I do! Part of my problem is that I share my tea. Hahaha. I have some really good brews that I just love to share by grabbing people from my dorm's common room and being all "Hey! Get in here and have a cup of this!" It's lots of fun, and then my friends leave with a new appreciation for tea which is the best thing ever. <3 Spawn my tea addict minions! Spawn! Just kidding. Hahaha.
The purpose of this blog is to post about various aspects of tea and being a young tea connoisseur in college. I hope that this will reach a lot of my friends here at Mount Holyoke and anyone else in college or interested in tea!
By the way, my posts may not be too frequent. I DO go to Mount Holyoke College, number stupid freaking 12 on the list of most rigorous colleges in the US, 5 rankings above Harvard College. Haha. Why do I go here again? Oh right, I actually wanted this kind of academic rigor. Haha. (Sighs) :)
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