Global Tea Time

Korean pomegranate tea Sometimes YouTube suggests videos about tea, even when I'm not looking for them. Today's post came from one of those. Since the Olympics are currently finishing up in South Korea, I figured why not? This is also the season when pomegranates are available, so it seemed like a good time to try. Actually this isn't so much tea as hot fruit juice. You could probably make this much easier with bottled pomegranate juice, but when have I ever done things the easy way? Korea is split into 2 countries. North , and South . Sadly, the most I knew about the Korean peninsula as a kid was from M*A*S*H reruns. Hardly an accurate representation of Korea. Thanks to the internet, there is a lot more information about North and South Korea available. I never realized that South Korea actually had 2 islands. Over 80% of their population lives in cities now, a shift from their rural past. Education is very important to their society, with students often attending i...

 Kenya When I was in college, I wanted to study abroad, but I didn't think that I could afford to. I also didn't think that I had the time to study abroad. The only model I knew was taking a semester abroad, and the classes might not exactly line up to the curriculum you had to complete for your major. I promised myself that I would finish college in 4 years because I couldn't afford to pay for anything longer than 4 years. To be honest, without student loans, I couldn't afford to pay for any college at all. My perception of study abroad changed when I went to one of my boring, seemingly irrelevant, yet required, gen ed classes. The history of the college of family and consumer sciences. Yes, that class (and in the end, my major) was just as lame as it sounds. But I went to every class, because I paid for them. As an added bonus, I didn't have to read the book if I just showed up and listened. One day, we had guest speakers talking about study abroad. That...

Seychelles Today the temperature is hovering below freezing. The high today says that it may get just above the freezing mark, so we're headed somewhere warm on our trip today.  The  Seychelles Islands are in the West Indian Ocean, north of Madagascar. While the map I'm looking at doesn't show the equator, I know that it runs through the middle of Kenya, so these islands are just south of the equator. This tiny nation is made up of 2 main island groups. The Mahé group of more than 40 islands that are mountainous and made of granite. The second group if islands number more than 70, and are flat and made of coral. The coral islands rise just a few feet above sea level, don't have any fresh water, and are therefore largely uninhabited. The Mahé islands are described as having a narrow coastal strip with a central range of hills, and are characterized by their lush, tropical vegetation, and "high hanging gardens overlooking silver-white beaches and clear lagoon...

Uganda Uganda forms the western border of Kenya, along with Lake Victoria (the source of the Nile river). On one of our road trips in Kenya, we stayed at an old, British Colonial farm house that is now owned by a Kenyan couple. It was a beautiful evening, and I remember sitting on the back veranda watching the sun set over the distant hills. There was obviously a large valley between us and the hills in the distance, and we were told that the hills on the other side of the valley were Uganda. It was a beautiful, peaceful looking scene, even though Uganda was less than peaceful at the time.  While the vast majority of the population still lives in the rural areas, the capital Kampala, is desribed as being quite cosmopolitan. We take our tea adventure from a video talking about tea shops in Kampala. According to this resource, in rural areas, black tea bags and local herbs are used to brew tea. In the city, they have tea shops that are experimenting with fancy ways to serve te...