Photo credit: chichacha / Foter / CC BY

How I would love to sit in a cozy café and celebrate this day face-to-face with you! We could share fun stories, life struggles, and work at solving all the world’s problems. We could talk about what we are learning, how we are leading, and how we are growing and changing through our experiences and community influences.

… and we could talk about International Coffee Day!!

Many of us are enamored with coffee! (I hope you tea and juice drinkers will bear with me today!) We drink coffee in the morning to come alert; in the afternoon to keep momentum going through the day, and into the evening as dessert after a great meal. We drink coffee with family, with dear friends, with fellow students, colleagues and clients, and with new acquaintances to “break the ice”.  Coffee brings comfort, memories, and energy to life!

Photo: isriya: Foter / CC BY-NC

We savor our coffee in all kinds of ways: espresso, americanos, lattes or cappuccinos; iced, decaf, instant, filter, and pressed; with and without additional flavorings and syrups, sugars, sweeteners, and creamers.

I began my coffee addiction habit with the strong aroma of percolating coffee daily announcing to me that morning had arrived in my childhood home. In college, I began to drink huge classes of iced, heavily and artificially sweetened coffee as I studied long into the night. I sacrificially cut back to decaf during my pregnancy and nursing years, but today I drink it black and bold and all day long.

International Coffee Day celebrates the long history of this awesome drink. Historians believe the properties of coffee beans were first discovered in Ethiopia. Coffee beans are actually the pits of the berry grown on the coffee plant. Tradition claims a 9th century goat herder noticed their stimulating effects on his goats and began experimenting. Coffee became popular in the Arab world around the 15th century, then spread to Asia, then to Italy, across Europe, finally arriving to the Americas.

Countries that celebrate International Coffee Day on September 29th include: Australia, Canada, England, Ethiopia, Hungary, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United States.

Where are you drinking your coffee today?  How do you like your coffee?