NIU

Tea Parties Aren't Just For Kids

Posted by Stacy on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 10:35 AM

I remember when I was little we would go to the store and buy a lot of food in bulk at Sam's club. We would always get my brother a ton of Gatorade and get our snacks for school and paper products and we would also buy wholesale tea because my dad loved to drink it cold after he worked out. And then one year I read this book about a little girl who had a valentine's day tea party and invited all of her friends and their stuffed animals and her whole house was decorated in a winter wonder land and I was hell bent on getting my parents to let me have a tea party. Finally for my birthday I had the best tea party ever. 20 of my friends came with their stuffed animals and we sat around drinking white tea and eating tiny sandwiches in our party dresses. It was everything I could have dreamed of and more.

It's funny to think of how we don't really grow out of thins like tea parties when we get older. Sure, we don't bring our stuffed animals with us, but the concept is the same. Over the summer my friends and I were home from school and even though it was summer we all had jobs or internships so we didn't have as much time as we thought we would. The weekends we went out, but after not seeing each other for almost a year during the school year, we decided we needed something more than weekends, so we made a weekly date to meet somewhere different. Every Wednesday one of us picked the place to meet. Being from Chicago, we had a lot of options and a lot of us worked downtown so it was easy to go out and find a sushi bar or just go for drinks. One week we went to this tea and coffee bar. Since one of my friends and I don't drink coffee, we opted for herbal tea instead and at the tea bar we could mix and match flavors and mixtures. It was really good and it reminded me of when I was little and we (most of the same friends) and I had my birthday party. We were still dressed up, we still had the same insecurities (maybe our problems were a little bigger now), but we all got along and talked over a cup of tea (or in this case a margarita). Some things just never change.