I’ve written a few times about the power of tea to connect cultures and help broaden an individual’s world—just by knowing a little about tea, where it is grown and the cultures that enjoy tea.
Experience Tea Studio was a Partner with Girl Scouts in 2013 and we’ve just been accepted as a Partner for 2014. I’m so excited about this because through teaching several Tea & Etiquette classes as well as Tea Discovery to Girl Scout troops, I see the connection in action. Often the class participants represent several different cultures and it’s been fun to have them share their stories about tea. Very simply, it’s fun to taste and learn.
In the U.S. we have such a pervasive coffee culture that it’s easy to forget tea is the second most widely consumed beverage in the world and that most cultures in the world start their day with tea. In the Children’s Tea & Etiquette class we visit five countries, following a world map and steep tea in each country’s traditional way. We also practice some simple and useful table manners.
In Tea Discovery, the girls learn more about the origins of tea and where it’s grown. We do more tasting and talk a lot about all the events in history that brought tea to Europe and America. The girls receive a broader understanding of how tea helped shape our modern world.
Tea—it’s so simple, yet way more than a beverage!