Afternoon Tea

A couple of weeks before leaving for France, I remember having a conversation with one of my co-workers at McNally Robinson. He'd just returned to Canada after having spent something around a decade teaching at a university in Poland. He said that one of the things that was hardest for him, in the course of re-adapting to life in Canada, was the change in pace. "You're going to find that life moves a lot slower over there," he said.

I've found this to be true in some ways, but not necessarily true in others. For example, it's unbelievable to me that we've been away from Canada for almost a month now. The time just seems to have dissipated, and five months isn't seeming as long now as it was before we left.

To a large extent, it would seem obvious that life is slower for me: no school, no work, doing things more or less at my own pace, on my own time. But one example of taking a little extra time to enjoy the day-to-day, now that we've gotten more or less settled in, is afternoon tea. We've been sitting down after lunch to enjoy afternoon tea almost every day, made possible by the fact that two days of the school week Lauren's home by 12:30, and a third day she doesn't have class until 2, which leaves us with plenty of time.

It's been a small daily routine or tradition that we've developed, and something that I really profoundly enjoy. Some days we sit and get on an interesting topic of conversation and can chat away an hour or more, while some days there isn't as much to say, and we can enjoy sitting in silence and sipping the tea and just sort of savouring the moment. I've found it to be a really nice way to gather my thoughts and remember to relax, and to enjoy the place we're (so lucky to be) in.

 Lauren likes afternoon tea because it gives her time to stop and smell the roses:

Brock gets very (inappropriately?) excited about afternoon tea:

As an interesting aside, we've sampled a small variety of cheap teas from the grocery store: royal breakfast, earl grey, and green tea (with "natural" flavour...). As of yet we've been unable to find any "plain" black tea, ie. red rose/orange pekoe. Not fancy enough for France, I suppose. There have been a couple of specialty tea and coffee shops with some really exotic looking options, though we haven't really experimented with these because of the equally exotic prices. And without a teapot or a kettle, we've been boiling water in a pot on the stove. Ah, afternoon tea...

Till next time,
-Brock