Tea With Milk

Last week I had forgotten my keys at home and was hoping that one of my roommates would be home to let me in that evening. Sadly, they were not, but our landlord has an extra key and so I headed down to borrow the spare. It had been a long day, it was already 8 pm, but my landlord’s wife insisted on ‘chatting’ over tea and I couldn’t say no, so I sat down. When she brought out the tea she asked if I wanted milk. Since I really don’t care if my tea has milk or not, I told her I would take mine just like she takes hers and so she put 1/3 tea, 2/3 milk.

Over an hour later, we were finally at a lull in the conversation, so I took the opportunity to compliment her tea in hopes of wrapping things up and getting home. When I told her that the tea was wonderful she replied ‘It’s the milk’. I knew that I shouldn’t ask, but I just had to and so I said ‘the milk?’ And then…She said ‘yes, we get it fresh from the milkman everyday and then we don’t put it in the refrigerator. That takes away the nutrition.’ In this case, the milkman would be the guy who gets up at 4 am, milks his goats, puts it in an unsealed, uncovered metal container, throws it on the donkey and heads into town, knocking on doors all the way to ask if you want milk. And if this wasn’t bad enough, it was 125 that day, so it’s not like in the states where if you left the milk out on the counter on accident, it would still stay relatively cool. (and even then, we would probably throw it away after an hour or so!) I haven’t been sick in the two months that I’ve been in the Sandbox, but after this tea I’m pretty sure it’s coming soon!