tea diaries ~~~~~ groooooovy

Yesterday, I ALMOST lost my faith in tea. ;)

Went with my homestay brother and sister to the International Tea Festival at the Convention Center here on Jeju. I'm really starting to appreciate that place, they bring in so much great stuff all the time. We got to the tea festival though ... and I really felt the language barrier. All sorts of tables were set up with beatiful tea sets, but I couldn't ask any questions - my host bro/sis couldn't really tell me any more than ... "over there, Chinese tea. Here, Korean tea." Sat down for a tea ceremony and ... okay, I'm not going to pretend to like it. I've never had a taste for the formality and mindnumbing sloth-litude of the Korean tea ceremony. I counted at least five people in the audience actually who fell asleep. Just as I was about to join them, my host mother came up from having finished her work downstairs in the bakery, and snuck us backstage! I swear, my host family knows everyone there is to know on this island. We got to taste a Taiwanese mountain green tea, grown with flowers, and an Indian black tea with cloves and milk. By the time we finished with those (delicious!), they had prepared teas in the lobby and I tasted Korean winter, spring, summer, and fall teas. I've never had a delicate enough pallette when it comes to distinguishing between different types of tea within the same general group, like green teas ... but after tasting each one, I could finally detect some subtleties! I'm developing that snobbery I so crave! :) (am i kidding??) ;) So anyway, the moral of this story is - host mothers are awesome. It's all about who ya know.

Today I went on a little ride on my scooter, a trip to find the "five days market" I've heard so much about. Every five days, the market apparently stays open all day. I caught the very end of it, and it was amazing!! A lot bigger than I expected. It reminded me of the English Market in Cork (awww Cork, how I miss you...) , and the market we found when touring Barcelona. This one wasn't just produce, though that dominated - there were a lot of clothes, from jeans to ajjima track pants to addoshi flannel shirts to hats and bras and underwear. I even found some parakeets. :) Went home with some tasty banana chips and a smile.