Bonnie Send Message

For those of you who haven’t been reading my notes over the past year, I’ll repeat a couple of things that some long-time Steepster friends already know (patience).

Other than trips to my tea shop Happy Luckys (where everyone knows my name, kind of like ‘Cheers’) and Church (where I can sit in the back away from bright migraine-inducing-light), I stay by myself and am afraid of people. (Terrified is a better word for how I feel.)
I’ve been working on this ‘terrified of people’ issue, and Steepster has been a big help to me.
My Priest (Fr. Evan) noticed that drinking tea and writing has changed my interaction with people. I’ve become gradually more sociable hanging around after Church longer to chat for a few minutes.
My fears are associated with forgetting words mid-sentence, the sudden onset of migraines with dizziness, and brain-fog from fibromyalgia. I gave in to the terror and it took over my life.

Finally, a few weeks ago, I’d had enough!
After Church one Sunday, I invited a Doctor and her 72 year old mother ( who was an Industrial Chemist in Romania) to tea.
These women weren’t even tea drinkers, they were coffee drinkers!

With no idea what to do with the time, I decided to share my life in the tea world with them (and I invited my granddaughter Schey to join in as my back-up).

I set up a tray with several kinds of tea to pass around. A beeng of puerh, some black pearls, fragrant oolong and lapsang souchong.

For tasting, we began with Wild Oriental Beauty Gonfu Style which they enjoyed very much.

The next tea was a large pot of Chocolate Phoenix Chai slowly steeped in milk with local clover honey. (I’ve written about this tea before, and the richness in milk with honey is the only way I drink Chocolate Phoenix Chai!)

The Chai was a hit! My guests had never had Chai before!
They commented on the chocolate flavor and gentle spice which I paired with a baked cheese and crackers and Dutch waffle cookies.

We had a good conversation about the health benefits of tea, life under Communism in Romania and immigration to the United States. I gave them a gift of Chai and made plans to meet at my tea shop in the near future.

Reading this is probably one of the most boring reviews to read that I’ve ever written….but to those of you who know me, it’s a real victory story!

If I failed to write about it here on Steepster, I wouldn’t be sharing with all of you who made it possible for me to break out of my shell!

THANK YOU!

It is the kindness of TEA PEOPLE that has given me confidence!