Written by Tiffany Jones
As many students start their post-graduation journey May 14, a group of Honors College students will embark on a three-week international tour to see the world through a curious point of view — the tea cup.
The idea for the tour came to professor Pat Garner after he read the book “A History of the World in Six Glasses” by Tom Standage.
“He [Garner] suggested last year that we formulate tours that trace the history of tea and coffee to study how they’ve been integrated intoculture and how they’ve affected commerce, religion and so on,” said Dr. Jeff Hopper, dean of international programs.
The program started last summer when a group of students went on a whirlwind coffee tour that took them to four countries spanning three continents.
Coffee tour veteran Darren Kentner is one of four returning students going on the tea tour.
“I loved the diversity,” Kentner said. “We stayed in tents at the top of the Simien Mountains one night, and then a week later we stayed in one of the nicest hotels that Istanbul,Turkey, had to offer.”
The tea tour starts in Boston, Mass., continues throughIndia and Morocco and finishes in London, England, but this experience will be different than the coffee tour.
“Coffee is only four or five hundred years old. Tea is almost 3,000 years old. It leads us to a much deeper study,” Hoppersaid. “Teahas become symptomatic of a lot of social, religious, spiritual, and economic and political ideas, but it makes a great window to view those topics.”
The tour was supposed to stop in Japan, a nation with some of the oldest and most recognized tea ceremonies, but had to re-route to Morocco because of the current nuclear situation.
Hopper said he believes that Morocco will add a differentspice to the program.
“I would never knowinglyput a student in harm’s way, so we’re not going to go to Japan,” Hopper said. “What Morocco brings is an African culture. It brings in an Arab culture that we wouldn’t have. It brings in the origins of iced tea and tea with mint.”
The tour will offer four classes: a high-altitude hiking kinesiology class, post-colonial literature, the standard international program humanities course and one more pivotal class: communication.
“Communication — that’s important because people communicate with words and books, but they also communicate over a cup of tea,” Hopper said.
