I'm Up, I'm Up

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We began our morning with breakfast, of course, and then hopped on our bus for the drive to tea country.
The two hour drive to tea country that looks exactly like every "everyday China" picture you've probably ever seen anywhere. It was, for the most part, lovely, but some of it kind of made you wonder who is planning where the construction sites pop up... namely the high-rise apartment complexes that seem to spring out of nowhere on barren stretches of highway.
Once we got to the tea field, we were introduced to the proper way to pick tea, given a brief history of the plantation, and took a tour of a portion of the grounds (the one they purposely show the tourists, the rest of the place is so big we'd have been there for days looking at leaves), and then... we picked our own tea!
The picking, I might add, was probably the single most hilariously fun parts of the day, and we all really enjoyed it. We learned later that we are, in fact, pretty shoddy tea-pickers, and should never seriously consider the vocation full (...or part) time; one person who does this job for a living can pick approximately five times what we picked in the same amount of time. And yes, that's as a group, not individually. Yikes. But we had so much fun doing it! There was a lot of "My Mexican roots are finally worth something!" coming from our lovely Evelyn and yours truly, some highly competitive inspiration to achieve from Andrew, and plenty of great photo and video shot by pretty much everyone (although, props to Alyssa and Sara for being pretty much awesome with their cameras), and all in all? If we never have to do it for a living, I'm fairly certain everyone will always look back at tea-picking as a really good time.
After picking said tea, we got to watch a Master begin the process of curing our tea, the first step of which process is drying. Now, in a really great tea business, evidently, your first drying is done by hand. By a tiny man with what looks a lot like a cross between a drum kettle and a wok. Unfortunately my camera was on the bus when this step was being demonstrated, so I don't have a photo. But imagine a bronze bowl the size of a large wok, built into a concrete ring with a heating element in it at roughly 350-400 F*, now imagine our meager 2 kilos of tea being put into that thing and tossed around (BY HAND) for about, oh... four hours. We didn't stick around for that whole time (thank goodness), but instead went to another fantastical lunch full of delicious and amazing things. Case in point? Eggplant the likes of which I HAVE NEVER TASTED. Good lord, you would have thought they roasted it for days and replaced every single molecule with pure, toasty butter. I cannot imagine a world where I never get to eat eggplant like that again. As well, the fish soup that made us all recharge our faith in things that swim? Amazing. The black-skinned chickens that apparently make this world a better place? They do. And the random little buns filled with sweet stuff? Heavenly.
Anyhow, eventually we walked around the lovely courtyard behind the restaurant, took some fun pictures, and got back to the tea factory. It was then that we witnessed the rest of the process; a lot of careful drying, packaging, and such. Then we go to watch a very elegant, simple ceremony and drink some tea. We were given bags of the tea we had picked, and sent on our merry way. Overall, a wonderful outing.
Then came night... and Flaming Dr. Peppers.
If I feel self-exploitative enough later, there will be a full entry devoted to that evening and all its awesomeness. For now, ta ta, and I'll try to be a bit more consistent in my blogging!
Later y'all

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