Coffee Shops

I am thankful for coffee shops.

I have spent a fair amount of time over the last few years drinking coffee at various coffee shops. In high school, we discovered Fido's. We thought we were so cool drinking coffee surrounded by Vanderbilt students. Harding had Midnight Oil. Tennessee Tech had Poets. Then at Lipscomb, I moved on to Starbucks. First it was kind of lonely. I spent time there drinking Fraps and studying. Then, I met Tiffany and really fell head over heals for Starbucks. We spent hours talking or playing Scrabble. Sometimes we would have a friend or two join us, but Starbucks really belongs to us. ;) My friend Nick and I would sometimes head to Fido's to chat. I think he still has such a tradition. At Frothy Monkey, I began playing with idea of doing Good Work with Paul and Jesse. Bongo Java changed my life literally. It is where Dawson, Brad, Amy and I discovered we had no jobs in Guilin and would have to move to Yichang instead. We had fun watching Amy dance this summer at Portland Brew. I miss these coffee shop experiences.

Now I occasionally go to a coffee shop (and I use that term loosely because good coffee is just not found here really...) to grade papers with Brad. We did frequent a real Starbucks in Xian. It was cool to take our Chinese friend to experience true coffee there. Today I went to Mr. Mai's and caught up with an old friend in Wuhan. All of these are good times too.

Really it might be the friends that make these coffee shops special, but hey it makes it that much better when you are holding a mug in your hand.