Coffee on the Party Train

The party train continues.... after a wonderful Friday night with Claudia, I had two festivities for Saturday. First, I attended the Full Moon party to meet Sing and Jason's one-month old son. Holding the precious bundle and watching his wide eyes take in all the new sights and sounds in the room around him just melted my heart. Babies are such an amazing gift.

In the later afternoon and evening I attended the 10-year anniversary celebration of a friend's language school. She rented the Roman House in Essen's magnificent Grugapark and threw a fabulous fest complete with entertainment and copious amounts of incredible, multicultural foods. The weather was predicted to be quite miserable, but planets aligned to reward dear Nicole for all her hard work and and gifted us all with a lovely sunny afternoon!

Between the cake reception hour and dinner, one of the features was a presentation/tour on the neighboring premise of a small coffee garden. It was fascinating! We held ripe coffee cherries in our hands, peeled back the skin and pulp, popping out the raw beans, and tasting them before learning how they are processed for production. The coffee expert passed around a couple distinct types of dried or parchment coffees for us to observe and smell the differences, before roasting one of them in his sample roaster shown here. He taught us about the fair trade and organic markets and then, of course, we sipped glasses of rich java.

Congratulations to new the new parents and the growing school and thank you for including me in your wonderful celebrations!