A Purist.

I don’t like chai tea. I think it’s sickeningly sweet and tastes too much like pumpkin pie, which I also don’t like. BUT, since starting my field placement at IJM headquarters in DC earlier this summer, I have been looking forward to my first cup of chai tea in the office here in South Asia.

I’m on the listserv for the office I’m doing my research at, so receive all the emails that are sent office-wide. Morning and evening, the office manager sends out an email to the entire staff letting them know that the tea is ready. The best part of these emails is that each one has a DIFFERENT picture or clip art image of something to do with tea: a pot, a cup, loose leaf tea, saucers, tea pots as skyscrapers in a cityscape – you name it. There has not been one repeat image the entire summer.

So, you can imagine my excitement when the first email came into my IJM inbox last Monday morning and I could actually head up to the kitchen to get myself a steaming mug full of the sweet, spicy goodness. You can see by my face in the picture that I was somewhat overwhelmed by my excitement. Either that, or I was delirious from only getting 12 total hours of sleep over the past three nights. Then again, maybe it’s a combination of both.

Oh, and I like the chai tea here. Must mean I’m a chai purist.