The Value of Coffee Essay -- Personal Narrative Writing

The Value of Coffee I didnt always enjoy the stuff. I would eat umber-flavored yogurt and coffee-flavored ice cream, but the actual beverage tasted astringent and crude, and it had incurred my discontent since my first encounter with it at the age of six. An aunt would crevice the family coffee every time we went to visit, and she would ask me, Do you drink coffee yet? as if to press me forward, to instill a desire to pass away toward my inevitable destiny of favoring coffee. I unheeded her. Its an acquired taste, some the great unwashed told me. I saw no reason to force myself to acquire it. It was a July morning in 1999. I was at the University of Bucharest, Romania, for the International Mathematical Olympiad. I waited in line for breakfast, picking up the toast, the pastries, the beverage. What was the drink? There were hardly a(prenominal) possibilities. The previous week, the US and Romanian teams had been training together in the townspeople of Sinaia, an d we got some evidence of what comprised the typical meal cold cuts and cheeses, bread and knocks, an entre of meat, potatoes, perhaps a corn mush, and some boiled vegetables, and assort desserts breakfast would be lighter fare. The usual drink was mineral water, the measuring rod of which suffered a deficiency wholly inappropriate to the heat (my requests of mai apa, va rog were diplomatically ignored the waiter in Sinaia perhaps thought I was only practicing my lyric poem skills) at breakfast, there might be juice, hot chocolate, or strawberry-flavored tea. Thus, when I picked up the glass of dark liquid in Bucharest, I imagined it was tea, or perhaps a thin chocolate. After sitting down in the stifling cafeteria, I naturally approached the drink. It was a shock, a fee... ...per-week quota always gets fill up not because I necessarily crave the drink, but because I periodically feel like I should be buying coffee at one time a tradition that has become seamless(pre nominal)ly enshrined in my identity. I have close to mastered the art of drinking coffee precisely twice per week. The nurse of coffee is mainly symbolic it serves as a liaison to my vocational and cultural community. People claim to drink coffee because it keeps them awake. That never whole caboodle for me. If I am drowsy, caffeine makes me drowsy with a headache, at best. It has less consciousness-raising effect for me than does a breath of fresh air. The effect of this substance is not neurochemical it is psychological. With each long swallow of a steaming brew, I look the pungent, rich first flavor, the appealingly bitter aftertaste, and the feeling of knowing who and where I am.