As I think back

As I think back, over my first pot of tea for the day, I wondered, "What got me so into tea into the first place?"

Starting off, looking at the first time I saw something other than liptons, I must have been about 7 or 8.

I saw a pretty orange box of something called "Bengal Spice" from Celestial Seasonings, and I asked my mother if we could buy some, because I thought it sounded fun and exciting.

it was a whole new world, and at first, I hated it. That "Bengal Spice" was sour, and far too spicy for my young self.

Fast forward to the first few years of high school, and I'm guzzling so much coffee that it's giving me palpitations. Everyone is looking for a solution, any solution, to get me to not drink so much caffeine.

I wouldn't drink decaf.

But what would I drink?

Enter whole foods, and a brand called Republic of Tea.

In particular, Blackberry Sage.

Now, that, I liked.

Not just a little, but a LOT.

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A few months later, I end up in San Francisco, visiting my father and my step-mom for christmas.

We wandered around china town, as I wonder aloud about how to get the same flavor of tea we had at the Empress of China restaurant, when lo and behold, here enters Red Blossom Tea Company.

They were wonderfully helpful, explaining grades of jasmine green tea, and how they were processed, letting me smell everything.

I walk out with 8 oz of sparrows beak jasmine, enough, I hoped, to last me until the next time I could visit, in July.

I drank it every day. my mom had gotten a teavana perfect tea maker and some loose tea for christmas from one of my aunts.

I became obsessed with tea, brewing it for friends, brewing it for school, as a demonstration for a speech.

Then came college, and back to coffee, for a while.

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But coffee bored me.

it all tasted the same, to me.

 I hated the jitters and shaking hands.

so I moved from my dorm so I could have a kettle. (no heating elements allowed in the dorm room, I was even getting my coffee from a local coffee shop off campus.)

That's when I found adagio. $2 sample sizes, hard to pass up for a poor college kid hooked on tea.

Everyone started to help support my habit.

birthdays, tea.

wedding, electric kettle,

thrift store teapots on tuesdays.

christmas, tea again.

and so on, until I realized.

I'm obsessed.

and I wouldn't have it any other way.

What I am drinking today- Rose Dark Tea from New Mexico Tea Company from a rooster tea pot, into a rooster mug.