Its all the same!!!!

When you wake up and find yourself in the US, things seem odd and different; things seem ridiculously difficult. But as time goes on, you find yourself constantly explaining your culture, your traditions, and sometimes even your language, quite often to people who claim to know things . An innocent economics grad student at the University of Houston found herself in one of these ridiculous, yet hilarious situations on a cold Monday afternoon. While she waited with her friend for a cup of hot chocolate, she happened to hear the conversation between two undergrad girls discussing what they wanted to drink. One of them suggested that they drink chai and upon the inquisition why, went on to explain that it was very healthy because it had a lot of spices and herbs in them. She also suggested that she could drink tea too. Put in crude terms, the grad student cracked up ending it with a smirk on her face, subtly making sure that the girls saw it. Unable to restrain her obsession to explain things, to friends and strangers alike, proceeded to tell them that it was the SAME- TEA and CHAI were the same things. Let me enlighten you as to why the grad student made it a point to set it straight. In the US, chai is sold at coffee places as flavored tea- orange, raspberry, chinese herbs (god knows what that means), spicy masala chai- basically ruining the taste of tea, aka chai. When are these people going to learn??? I guess until they realize that Shreya and Shreyasee aren't the same thing, that semai is actually semi, that antai is anti and of-ten is often, we are still going to have chai as chai and tea as tea.

weirdos!