Iranian New Year came early this year.

Today was a beautiful spring day so with the sun shining and breeze blowing I set off to enjoy the weather. I walked to my mom's house, it's only about two blocks away by the way. I went over there for a little visit because surprisingly as busy as life is I don't see my mom, stepdad and younger siblings as much as I'd like even though we're so close. Anyway, Iranian New Year is the first day of spring but my mom surprised me with a tea book!

Of course the nerd in me was so excited and I came home and started reading it on my balcony (again, it's gorgeous outside). This book is really cool because I've always loved tea but I didn't really know much about the origins.

One thing that I always wondered was about what word is used for tea. In the US and much of Europe, the word for tea starts with a "t." English is Tea, French is The etc. In the eastern part of the word the word for tea starts with "Ch." Chayee in Farsi, Cha in Chinese. The reason for this is a no brainer but one I didn't know. The difference is based on whether tea was delivered by sea or by road and therefore the word was different because of the different influences of the language of the transporter. Cha is tea in Mandarin and so the countries that are closer and received tea through a ground route adopted this sound in their vocabulary for tea!

Reading about the different plants variations and how they are cultivated. Excited to share more information with you as I read!