Coffee – GW Blogs from Abroad

Underneath the coffee tree

AdminApril 14, 2015

If you know me well, you know that I am quite the coffee snob. I am religious about my coffee routines in the morning when I am at home. I grind my beans fresh, and delight in the robust smells of my French Press brewing as I get ready for classes. My coffee is always just the way I like it. You can tell by the way I am even writing about this little routine of mine now that aside from friendships, this may be the biggest thing I miss. ANYWAYS, last week I had an experience that every coffee connoisseur dreams of.

Our comparative study took us up to Chiang Mai and the into the hills north of Chiang Mai to meet and spend a few nights with the Pogonyor tribe, a subset of the Karen Hill Tribe. I knew the villagers were farmers, many of them living a simple life of subsistence farming and selling any leftovers. However, little did I know that they also grew coffee.

We drove up the winding roads for two hours to get to the village, and arrived mid-morning. The air was cool and the sky was blue and the plants were lusciously green—a nice change from down in the lowlands in Chiang Mai where they are burning their crops and everything is dry and lifeless. We were actually at a high enough elevation that there were pine trees. The Pah that was hosting us welcomed us with a coffee feast, if there ever were such a thing. He had a bag of beans sitting on the table. I nibbled on one—immediate cure to my caffeine headache. Pah ground the beans, put heaps of them in a filter over a pitcher and methodically poured water over the ground beans. Comforting smells of rich, robust black coffee, right from the source wafted up towards my face. I felt as though I was at our family cabin in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. The combination of the smell of pine and the smell of dark coffee brought me back to summer mornings spent there. This was paradise. A pour over coffee, traditionally one of the most hipster drinks you can buy in America, was being brought back to it’s roots. Actually though. I was physically standing under the coffee tree the beans had come from.

Noticing my joy and delight over this little experience we were having, Pah picked the coffee cherry, the fruit that the bean derives from, off of the tree and allowed me to smell it. Then he led me around the side of the house and showed me where he roasts the beans. I was expecting a massive roasting machine like there are in the US. I hadn’t even imagined other ways one could roast the coffee plant. But we turn the corner, and he motions to this little pot on the ground, that essentially a Thai wood burning stove. He then pulled out a contraption that sat on top of it; a small barrel with open ends and a crank on the side that he put the beans in over the fire. Turning and turning them to roast each batch, which would have probably filled three or four bags to sell. Handmade coffee. I was in awe. I will never see coffee the same again.

Sa wa dee ka!

AdminFebruary 2, 2015December 17, 2018

Wat Arun Temple- From my first day in Bangkok

Hello (Sa wa dee ka) from Khon Kaen, Thailand! I have been in Thailand for nearly two weeks yet it has felt like I have been here for at least a month. Each day is jam-packed with activity and new experiences. I am studying with a small group of American students from Universities around the country, so we spend a fair amount of time together. We all live in the same dormitory building in the university district of Khon Kaen right on the edge of campus. This dorm building is my home for half the time I am here in Thailand, but the other half I spend in week long homestays every other week in rural communities. The first one starts this Monday (2/2)! I’m thrilled that I get both a homestay experience and a college student experience. This past Sunday after a three-day orientation at a site about an hour outside of the city we moved in with our Thai Roommates. I have yet to meet a Thai person that has been rude or unkind. My roommate included. Kim is a kind, thoughtful, energetic, and very sporty. She loves singing John Legend and playing basketball.

On my first night in Khon Kaen, Kim brought me to an Agriculture Fair on KKU’s (Khon Kaen University) campus. I rode to the fair on the back of Kim’s Motorcycle. Motorcycles, or what Thai’s call ‘Moterscies’ are the primary mode of transportation around Khon Kaen (Sorry, Mom. Be comforted-- I do wear a helmet!). This fair was a massive spread of tents and stalls sprawled out on what felt like a square mile of campus. If it wasn’t for Kim I would have gotten massively lost. The fair had everything from mango tree saplings, banana trees, flowers and small cacti plants, to cows, fighting roosters, bunnies, puppies, and goats. But that’s not nearly all. There were stalls and stalls of wild food and clothing vendors as well. I played it safe and only tried a few samples of food and then bought a fresh cold coconut. Buying fresh raw coconuts is going to become a weekly ritual for me at the fruit stand down the road from the apartments. They are so sweet and refreshing!

Food has been an adventure. I haven’t gotten sick yet (knock-on-wood), and everything that I have ordered has been delicious! I am able to order my food in Thai because my program has already led us through twenty hours of intensive Thai class. It’s incredible how much I am able to speak in such a short time! All the food is so cheap (on average, one American dollar can buy you a large meal)! My favorite dishes so far have been a traditional Issan pork dish, made with lots of lime and green onion- very spicy and eaten with sticky rice, as well as green curry and morning glory greens (kindof like stir-fried kale). Every dish I try has been pretty fabulous.

In Thailand coffee is generally of the hyper-sweet powdered instant variety. Not my favorite. This past week, motivated by my caffeine headaches, I have managed to find a few cafes around my apartment that have real coffee! Cafes open no earlier than 9am, and some open at three. Coffee is not a morning necessity for some reason. When ordering, I always have to be very intentional about saying ‘mai sai juan’ or ‘don’t add sweet.’ Otherwise they will pour a shot of condensed milk in with the coffee.

This next week I will be living with a family in a slum in Khon Kaen for four days. It is the first of our six home stays in different communities around Issan (the northeast of Thailand). I am excited to experience their way of life, gain a new perspective, and practice my Thai.

Life Without Starbucks

AdminMay 5, 2014December 14, 2018

By catrionaschwartz

I’m almost near the end of my time here in Rome. On the one hand I’m excited to go home—I’ve been studying abroad for a year now and there are so many things I miss—but at the same time I’m not ready to leave. Living in Rome has been an adventure. Being able to travel every weekend and to constantly see new things is something I don’t think I’d ever get tired of. Being able to return to a sunny apartment in Rome made the experience even better.

One thing that has been a surprising joy is standing at a bar, drinking a cappuccino in the mornings. It was something I was a bit confused by when I first arrived here. One, that what we would call cafes are called bars, and two, that there are often very few seats in these cafes. Instead you see people lined up at the bar, sipping at on their espressos and macchiato, bags leant against their legs, looking for all intents and purposes completely settled there.

Taking a coffee to go will garner you some odd looks—certainly you’ve clearly marked yourself as a foreigner—because very few Italians drink their coffees outside the bar. For a dyed in the wool Starbucks patron, where almost everyone gets their drinks in paper and plastic to go cups, it all seemed a bit off-putting.

I gave it a try though. Standing by myself, my bag leant against my leg, in comfortable silence with strangers doing the same on either side of me, I realized it wasn’t so bad. And coffee tastes worlds better when it’s not coming out of a paper cup. It’s a way to relax a bit as well, after a stressful morning commute (and public transport in Rome, during rush hour is a trial, a trial of wills, patience, and balance).

It’s such a small thing, but it has made me enjoy coffee in a different, if equally ritualized way. Before living in Rome, coffee meant a to-go iced latte or chai from Starbucks, taken to class, or to drink while studying. It was a way to supplement an experience, or to make it more palatable. In Rome, coffee is the experience, and it’s one I’ve come to love.

Coffee Faux Pas

AdminMarch 6, 2014December 14, 2018

By billienkatz

"Me pone un cafe con leche para llevar" is a saying you rarely hear in a cafe or restaurant in Barcelona, unless of course, the person saying it is speaking in a botched 'spanish' accent, and is American. This also may or may not be the summary of my abroad experience, in which, drinking coffee while walking, in class, outside of a cafe, or in a cup to-go is probably worse than FC Barcelona losing to Real Madrid.

Meals in Barcelona are extremely grounded within the family, which is the most central structure of Spanish life. As a result, meals are elongated processes (something I like, yet had to adapt to), you are never rushed to pay the check, and every bite and sip of the meal is consumed within the restaurant. Then, there's me, and the rest of the American study abroad students. I live off of 1-2 cups of coffee every morning at home, and during orientation for my IES program when they explained that coffee wasn't allowed in class, I took it as a personal attack.

I found an alternative solution to the weak instant coffee that was available in my apartment - cafe con leche. This drink uses espresso and hot milk, and combines to give the caffeine kick a person like me needs to be functional during my 9 AM classes. Un cafe con leche para llevar, which is translated into "a coffee with milk to take away" became my morning mantra, and since it's just a tiny cup of espresso and milk, I'm able to finish my cup quickly before entering the IES building.

Now that I am more comfortable in my host city, I decided that my coffee needs were more important than the stares and dirty looks I was receiving from my locals, as I walked down the street with my 'take-away' cup. Maybe this is culturally incompetent of me, and I know that my cross-cultural psychology teacher would not be proud, but this is a cultural faux pas I make day in and day out.

Me gusta mi cafe,

Billie

It’s Happened…

AdminOctober 30, 2013December 14, 2018

By nmbutler3

It’s happened. I have crossed over to the dark side and officially become a tea drinker. I wasn’t expecting to, and to be entirely honest, was in many ways hoping I wouldn’t, but the conversion has happened. I now regularly drink more tea than coffee, even in the mornings – what has my life come to? Of course I realize how overly dramatic and bizarre I sound with all this, but as I’ve mentioned before, I am a fairly avid coffee drinker and usually a hesitant tea consumer, so the realization that I now drink more tea than coffee in a day came as quite a shock.

So, as I sat there the other morning drinking my cup of lemon ginger clippings tea, reveling in my new realization and listening to my flatmate joke about how British I’ve become, it occurred to me just how many little British and Scottish habits and practices I had picked up over the last few weeks. A lot of people assume the cultural exchange when studying abroad is limited to new foods, dress, and popular culture references, but there are so many more subtle habits and cultural aspects that crossover without you realizing it. These are especially apparent when you participate in a direct exchange program like this where you predominately interact with local students rather than other Americans.

So here are the top four unexpected cultural habits I’ve picked up over thus far:

1. Tea over coffee

This is probably the most generic and stereotypical example, but it’s happened and I’m still coping.

2. Question Inflection

Now I haven’t started to speak with a Scottish accent, but it has been pointed out to me several times that I phrase questions with a British inflection. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but if you visit or study in the UK, or watch enough British television, you’ll know exactly what I am talking about.

3. Saying “trousers” or “jeans” but avoiding “pants” at all costs

Now I realize that this is another rather strange sounding cultural habit or practice, but it is definitely one that will happen to you if you study or visit here. The term “pants” refers to a very different article of clothing than it does in the States, so you learn quickly that not all statements about your pants are socially acceptable. Like most other Scottish and British slang phrases like “clever” or “bloody,” most people tend to pick up on this one rather quickly.

4. Thinking like a Brit or a Scot

This is another one that is a bit more difficult to properly describe, but over the past few weeks, I have definitely noticed a difference in my normal mindset. For example, I am much more sarcastic and my sense of humor is getting dryer by the day. I also find myself a bit more reserved in social interactions, a characteristic I’ve realized is quite normal and common for many Brits. I’ve also started to notice the differences between North and South regions of the UK and make reference to them on a fairly regular basis. Now of course these are minor details, but it seems that almost everyday I am seeing more and more of the Scottish perspective and more exciting yet, actually understanding and internalizing them.