Thomas Brock, our resident travelling English teacher shares an experience he had related to the topic of our Conversation Club this week.
Read on to hear about Thomas’ experience with his first ever tea ceremony
Vocabulary List
- Regular
- happening or doing something often
- Attitude
- a feeling or opinion about something or someone, or a way of behaving that is caused by this
- Habit
- something that you do often and regularly, sometimes without knowing that you are doing it
- Ceremony
- (a set of) formal acts, often fixed and traditional, performed on important social or religious occasions
- Avid
- extremely eager or interested
- Cuppa
- a cup of tea
- Teenager
- a young person between 13 and 19 years old
- Blend
- a mixture of different things
- Mug
- a large cup with straight sides used for hot drinks
- Brew
- If you brew tea or coffee, you add boiling water to it to make a hot drink, and if it brews, it gradually develops flavour in the container in which it was made
- Sip
- to drink, taking only a very small amount at a time
- Ritual
- a way of doing something in which the same actions are done in the same way every time
- Steep
- to cause to stay in a liquid, especially in order to become soft or clean, or to improve flavour
- Invite
- to ask or request someone to go to an event
- Lid
- a cover on a container, that can be lifted up or removed
- Figure
- a shape or form, or model of a person or animal
- Flask
- a special container that keeps drinks hot or cold
- Methodically
- in a very ordered, careful way
- Ideal
- perfect, or the best possible
- Slurp
- to drink a liquid noisily as a result of sucking air into the mouth at the same time as the liquid
- Scent
- a pleasant natural smell
- Bubble
- a ball of gas that appears in a liquid, or a ball formed of air surrounded by liquid that floats in the air
- Togetherness
- the pleasant feeling of being united with other people in friendship and understanding
- Envisage
- to imagine or expect something in the future, especially something good
A Tea Ceremony
This week, I wanted to talk about an experience I had recently.
If you are a regular listener to the Thinking in English podcast, then you will have heard Tom talking about the history of tea. In the podcast, Tom talks about tea, its history, and traditions, but also about his own attitudes towards tea.
Tom drinks a lot of tea by the way.
I thought I would take this opportunity to share my own opinions on tea and my tea-drinking habits. In fact, this week I wanted to share a recent experience involving tea.
Also, if you are a member of the Thinking in English Community then you will have seen that the Conversation Club topic for this week is all about Tea, tea drinking, the history of tea, and tea ceremonies.
Well, my story this week is all about a tea ceremony.
I Like Drinking Tea.
Whilst I may not be as avid a tea drinker as Tom is, I certainly do like a cuppa.
Growing up in the UK, I started drinking tea regularly as a teenager, and I followed the pretty standard rules of tea drinking in the UK. A blend of strong black teas in a bag, in a mug, with hot water. After you give it time to ‘brew’ you remove the bag and add a splash of milk.
That is how I would drink my tea, and I would drink anywhere between 1 and 4 cups a day.
However, once I moved abroad, I started to drink a few more different teas and drink them in different ways. I tried green teas and white teas, flavoured teas, and teas that aren’t really teas at all.
Now I drink a wide selection of tea.
I like a coffee in the morning. I drink a mixture of different teas from flavoured black teas with milk, green teas, and herbal infusions in the day, and I like to sip on a mint or chamomile tea in the evening.
Whilst I now drink a lot wider variety of tea, my tea ‘ritual’ is almost always the same.
Boil the kettle. Add a tea bag to a mug. Let it steep. Add milk, or not. Drink.
Last week, however, I tried something different.
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The Tea Ceremony
Last week we invited over a couple of friends for dinner. I absolutely love dinner parties, and perhaps I will write about my love of food at a later date, but this time we are talking tea.
After dinner, one of our guests went to get her bag, from which she pulled out a wooden box with a removable tray, a glass pot, a china cup with a lid, five tiny tea glasses, a bag of tea, and a little stone figure of a smiling pig.
She had even brought her own water in a great big flask.
Our guest informed us that this was the tea ceremony that she performs for customers at the tea shop where she worked. We were in for a treat.
The Ritual
Over the next two hours, she methodically poured hot (not boiling) water onto the tea leaves that she had placed in the china cup. She poured the water first into the glass pot, so that it could cool a little to the ideal temperature.
Then she would allow the tea to steep for a few minutes before pouring out five tiny portions that we would slurp and sip altogether.
Again and again, maybe 6 or 7 times we drank from our tiny cups, breathing in the scent of the tea before tasting it.
My favourite part was pouring hot water over the little stone pig, or ‘tea pet’ and watching it blow tiny bubbles from its mouth.
It was slow and ritualistic. It took time. We appreciated each sip of tea. Most of all, it allowed us to chat and to feel a togetherness that you can’t achieve with a single teabag in a mug.
I really enjoyed this kind of tea drinking. So much so in fact, that I went out and bought a nice teapot, which we can steep loose tea in, and whilst it won’t be exactly the same as the ceremony I described, I envisage a process of waiting for the tea to steep where we can sit and chat, awaiting the delicious hot drink.
That’s it for this week.
Thomas
How do you like your tea?
Do you enjoy new experiences?
Will you be joining the Conversation Club?
