It was the last day of World Tea Expo, and I seemed to have lost my “Way”.
That’s how I felt that morning—kinda lost. Rousting out of bed was difficult, as per usual. But today was particularly hard. Last days of anything usually are. To kick the tiredness to the curb, I went from zero-to-“wake-the-hell-up” with a yaupon RTD.
It did the trick.
Let me tell you a little about my “Tea Uncle”, Austin Hodge.
Austin Hodge and I. Photo by Nicole Schwartz.
Why is he wearing a Zhong Shan Zhuang, and how did someone convince me to wear a suit? I’ll get to that.
World Tea Expo, 2016, Day 2 . . . started early.
Really early. Okay, maybe not that early, but it felt early. Sleep was a rare commodity that week, thus far. I immediately hit the Teas Etc. booth and grabbed an oolong to refuel.
If I was going to spend the morning attending core panels, I was gonna need it. My attention span was rocky at best, already. Add lack of sleep to that, and I was useless to the world.
A month ago, during a tea-‘n-matcha-fueled dinner pairing, a university educator asked me this:
“What do you do?”
“I’m just a tea blogger,” I replied.
She sort of tilted her head, confusedly—like a Saint Bernard.
Then asked, “Why?”
The follow-up question caught me off-guard. I was both hurt and offended by it. Not because she meant it as a slight (it wasn’t and she didn’t), but more because . . . I had no clue how to answer that question.
But I’m getting ahead of myself . . . let’s get back to that tea pairing I mentioned at the beginning.
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