In Public Speaking 220 this past quarter, I gave a five minute speech on the benefits of drinking daily tea. Well I got a 3.5 for that class. I did pretty well I think.

Hi everyone,
I'm Nathalia L. of Seattle, Washington. This webpage gave me a 4.0 in Library Sciences. (Thanks for that, Mr. Nelson!). I will continue to expand upon this as I feel quite inspired. As you may notice, however, it does not contain information on the subject so much as it does on where to find the information; it was for a research course. The links on the other hand, are a good place to go to if you want specific information. Go to them.

Project Title: (You pretty much all know what my project is already). I think an appropriate title is simply, My Tea Blog.

Description: It was and still is my intention to find and gather bits of useful information on the health and culture of different types of tea.

LC and Dewey Classification: I will return to this.

Key Free Websites, References, Periodicals, and Books: They're all listed in my blog. I posted most of everything I found to be useful and what I found by using the databases.
http://www.socalsocietea.com/ is an excellent website; not only does it talk about the tea itself, it also discusses the history and culture of each kind of tea.

Useful Library Databases: EbscoHost at Academic Search Complete and Voyager on the school's website. These, among other suggested databases, I found to be extremely beneficial. These listed ones are specific databases from where I found some of what I used most of books, journals, etc.

Relevant Organizations: the tea companies, one of which I've contacted; Celestrial Seasonings. This also falls under Other Sources of Information, where you can contact the private companies via email or phone and come up with some interesting and diverse information.

http://www.socalsocietea.com; a great website; very colourful. I looked into attending the Japanese Tea Ceremony while on Kauai this past week, but there was a surprising lack of this event, while on Oahu, the ceremony is extremely popular. Oahu has a high amount of Japanese immigration. Unfortunately, I was not on Oahu. I saw the tea plant in one of its native locations on Kauai. There were two tea plants. There is one plant with a big leaf, the ti plant, and then there is the Tea Leaf Tree, from where the beverage comes.

The Celestrial Seasonings webpage is colourful and includes a series of short informational videos and easy to navigate catagories of their types of tea, including Holiday teas (which I am extremely faithful to, personally). I recommend this website to curious folk such as myself. It includes "frequently asked questions" at the bottom of the main page. These questions involve mainly the health of tea in general, whether it is Celestrial Seasonings or not. Some frequently asked questions are...
How much caffeine does an average cup of each kind of tea contain?
And the answer paraphased was: Black Tea approx. 60mg
White Tea approx. 50mg
Green Tea approx. 36mg
Herbal, (this is a good soothing nighttime drink), usually none
This is compared to Drip Coffee: approx. 90mg and Regular Cola: approx. 45mg

Another question was: What does "natural flavors and ingredients" mean? This, I think is an important question to a lot of people.
The answer paraphased was that a tea drink with "natural flavors and ingredients" can include concentrated substances of the fruits, herbs, spices, petals stored in the factories but does not include MSGs. This was the information provided on the brand's website. For the most part I think that the information provided here concerns any tea drink in general. Whether or not you want to believe this information is up to you.

Today I am going to contact one of my personal favourite tea companies. "Celestrial Seasonings" is an economical but decent brand of green, red, and white teas. Their website is www.celestrialseasonings.com. I hope to actually get some info from this site, (even if somewhat commercial). I aim to contact the company in hope of them contacting me back. This is a new form of information gathering, one that we have not really gone over in class. I'll try it and see how it works. With this, I will actually publish some information on my topic right here on my blog, which I have not done yet. I'll publish the results I get from Celestrial Seasonings when they contact me.

Under ProQuest on the school's website, I did an Advanced Search using the keywords "tea" and "culture". Most of the results came up under History and Politics of tea. I found a periodical that let me veiw the full text online.
Under the Basic Search, I searched "tea" and "culture" and found the following journal: "The Birth of a Noble Tea Country: On the Geography of the Colonial Capital and the Origins of Indian Tea" by Andrews B. Liu, vol.23, Oxford. March 2010 (?). This was an analysis of relevant geography, economy, as well as history. I read the full p.73 text online.
Under Topics Search, I searched "tea" and the optional key terms which included "Recipes, Basic Industry, Health, etc..." All of my favourite books from this Search can be found on the school's library website under My List.
Look at southseattle.edu
Databases include Academic Search Complete and ProQuest.

It's not letting me paste it, but I found a very interesting book involving "Arabic medicinal plants" under EbscoHost in Academic Search Complete in the SCCC Library main website, using the keywords tea -AND- culture.

My subject is tea, and I've started my blog on the subject... I don't really know where to go from here. I think I'll publish my assignments here. We'll see what happens...