WEEK 3: tea time!
On May 1st, Rachel, Kelly and Ashley met in class to finishing posting our updates and work out the logistics of matching the tea rituals with each of our stories. Kelly wrote up the matching steps for each paragraph in Ashley’s story to see how everything would play out for Twine and making the tea. We also briefly talked about the possibilities of doing alternate endings for the stories but decided that we didn’t have enough time.
Wei and Kevin then brought in our tea supplies so we could learn more about the tea and more about the process while actually making the tea (other than reading how to do it). Rachel decided that we should try out the two hardest teas to make. Wei started with Tieguanyin, a Chinese tea, which will be used for Rachel’s story.
Wei explained that we need to put the teas into a filter and “wash” them with hot water. Patience is a very big factor in making the tea. After washing the leaves, you have to pour them into the other container. Unfortunately, Wei didn’t have any tools with him, but he would usually use something similar to tongs. After transferring the tea leaves, you throw the water used to wash the leaves away, which we all thought would be really interesting to incorporate into the stories.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Then, you let the tea steep for two minutes and then pour it back into the container that you poured the wash water out of. After pouring the tea, you wait one to two minutes, then we tasted it! It was very delicious and the cup smelled like a garden afterwards, it was very unique! Wei and Kevin also explained that this tea was very social tea and meant to drink with others.
We also decided we’d already have the water boiled and prepared to be used to make the tea and whether or not we should set our game in groups or singularly. Because some of the teas are better with other people, it wouldn’t make sense to go through all the work and just have one person drink the tea
.
Then, we decided to taste the Pu’re tea, which will be going with Ashley’s story. You do need a knife to break off some of the tea to use. With this tea, you do wash the tea leaves then you drink it without transferring it to another pot. You can’t get as many pots with this tea than the Tieguanyin tea. Not a full boil. When passing the tea’s you are very gentle.
We want to get the audience to realize that tasting the teas is that you are “overcoming” something. The idea is that they have this high expectation going in to drinking the tea but during the interaction it can be totally different. You can go into something with expectations but things will change what you thought would happen.
With tea, there is a point where in order to protect what you’re experience is with the tea, you’ll stop to not overdo it. You are controlling the tea. Don’t push it.
​
Later in the day, Rachel, Kevin and Ashley met in the library to work through everything we had to get done for May 8th. We assigned the work to each person, we are all going to update the description of the story experience, Kevin and Wei are going to compile their list of resources, Ashley is going to work on the issues/success and details about the process, everyone is going to post their photos and videos in the Google drive. Each person needs to make their reflective essay and Rachel and Kelly is going to focus on putting together the presentation.
Then, Rachel and Ashley starting working on the logistics of the questions we are going to put at the beginning of our Twine game to determine what story a reader will get. We wrote it all up on the whiteboard and then transferred it into Lucidchart so it will be easier to eventually put into Twine. Rachel and Ashley did bump into a few issues with the questions, sometimes having to re-do parts to make sense.
