blank pages to fill: Tea overload

Two days of downtime eating nothing but bread with jam, tasteless bananas, biscuits, water, and chinese medicine. Decided to suck it up and go out again. It was a great choice.

Went to Yonghegong Lama Temple, a type of a buddhist temple. It was intricately designed and inside were placed many, many buddha statues of different purposes. This reminded me of a time when I went to a museum in Korea, where there was a room of 1000 buddhas or more (eerie atmosphere). This time when I saw so many again, I was more prepared. Many chinese people came by with incenses and burned three, bowing to the buddha of their preference and praying to it. It would be interesting to take a class on buddhism maybe in the future... just to see how far it's been carried and what's been drawing people to it.

After that, my good company and I went to a Confucius Tea House, where we got to see the art of tea ceremony and got to drink some of the legit Chinese tea. This was where I learned that:

Packaged tea may hold much additives, flavorings, and/or preservatives
There are many different variations within the green tea family
White, green, and oolong tea are good for summer to cool down the body heat
Black tea is good for winter and can be brewed multiple times
Most Americans who visit teahouse tend to undervalue tea whereas Europeans know how to appreciate.. you can guess why.
Asian tea probably originated in China or India (in contrast to my previous assumption in being Japan)
Mastering foreign language is good for you.

So my friends can speak English, Cantonese, and Mandarin and it's funny how they speak to me in Cantonese sometimes. I'm learning more and more that learning additional languages can take you far. Try it out for yourself.

We ended up staying in that teahouse for about 5 hours just talking amongst ourselves. Didn't even eat anything either, just drinking tea on repeat. And when we were past the stage of hunger and about to head out to yoshinoya, a storm came by. The rain was pouring so heavily and the thunder was so dang loud. What the heck... and as if 5 hours of tea wasn't enough for us, the tea lady liked us so much she wanted to treat us out to more tea. Can you believe it..... MORE tea. So the art of tea making started over as she brewed for us some "narcissist tea." Stayed for 2 more hours. We gave her an English name by the way... she let me choose. Guess what I chose. Jasmine. HAhahaa. Perfect for a tea lady no?