Today’s
session of the Gabfest Club (Window on
America center Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) was dedicated to the InternationalTea day (December, 15).
The
task of the session was to compare the tea drinking habits in the USA and in
Ukraine, to explain certain details of Russian tea tradition to our American
volunteer Mr. Jason.
The
group was introduced to an important event in the American history – the Boston tea party. The story was illustrated with the History
channel video and comments of Mr. Jason.
The
next was Starbucks’ video about Oprah Winfrey blending tea for launching
Teavana brand. This allowed to introduce the
popular US Brands and new vocabulary.
The
second part of the session was dedicated to the Slavic traditions of tea
drinking. The group was offered a display of artifacts about drinking tea in
Ukraine: samples of iconic Ukrainian china cups, tea
glass-holders, air-tight boxes for loose tea, etc. The group had to explain to
Mr. Jason a lot of fun facts about the displayed artifacts.
In
former times, there was a ‘samovar’ – a kind of kettle for boiling water and
keeping it warm- and special glasses (not cups) used for serving hot tea. As
china cups came to Russia much later than to other countries, Russians used to
drink tea out of glasses with metal glass holders. The fine decorated holders
were used both for esthetic and practical purposes preventing the palms from
direct contact with hot tea. Those who travelled with the Ukrainian or Russian
Railways a couple of years ago could have been lucky to see and even use them. Some rare examples can still be found in grandmothers’ cupboards.
The
traditional Russian tea is very simple without any additional flavors. At the
same time, it never comes on its own. Tea is always served with something sweet
(ginger breads, bread rings “bubliki”), with jam, honey or condensed milk.
The
topic was interesting and the session was enjoyed by all the participants.
At
the end of the meeting we had a tea party.
Number
of participants – 29 persons.
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