My Tea Story

    I am currently 17 years old and have been drinking tea almost religiously for around 3 years now. Before that I would only have a cup of Lipton Green tea here and there, and that was usually for when I had caught a cold.
    I had my first cup of loose leaf tea at Teaopia around Christmas time in 2009 (it was a hot cup of Pomegranate Green Tea). My family then started buying a few bags of loose leaf a month, trying to ease our way into it because it was good for us and frankly it tasted alright. I would drink maybe a cup a week.
    The summer of 2010 was when I truly fell in love with loose leaf. I went to Teaopia once a week, making friends with the employees, tasting new teas, and buying new equipment. And as I became more obsessed with tea, my sister and my mother were starting to fall out of it, making me the sole tea drinker in the house. 
     Soon enough I had tasted nearly half of the teas at Teaopia, with ten different types stored at home. I had so many tools for steeping and tins of tea leaves that I had an entire cupboard in our kitchen reserved for me and my tea.
     In school I started bringing a cup of tea to my first period class everyday and people started to take notice. Friends and classmates and even teachers would come up ask me questions about tea. What is my favourite? Where do I buy my tea? Recommendations? It pushed me to learn more and generally appreciate the art form that is tea making.
     In my final year of high school, my writer's craft class was writing blogs. To be different I decide to write about something not many people knew about, something that I too would be interested to learn more about. That class has since ended and I still keep this blog as a hobby. I do research,  talk to different types of people and I drink as much tea as possible, trying to come up with new and interesting content.
    Today I drink 3-4 cups of tea a day, go to a tea store twice a week and have 20 different teas in my personal collection. I can honestly say tea is more than just my favourite beverage, its my hobby, my love.

I'd love to hear your tea story whether it be 20 years long or 20 days long, let me know in the comments!

-Sarah