Fidalgo Bay Coffee Tour

I took my class on a field trip to the Fidalgo Bay Coffee factory. The pictures below show the progression of coffee from bag and raw bean, to the roaster, coming out of the roaster, and then being stirred. During the stirring process the beans are actually being cooled by a fan underneath that is sucking the heat out. It keeps them from over-roasting. (P.S. Things might be a little jumbled in this post as I'm trying out some of the new features of Picasa.) Click on the pictures if you want to see them larger.

Here I am with my level 1 & 2 students Mon-Fri. for two hours a day. They are an interesting bunch. As they learn about American culture and the Western educational system, I also learn a lot about them and their countries. The students pictured are from Mongolia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. In this picture, one Mexican student is missing, and two other guys are hidden behind other students. The white guy in the picture is my teacher's aide whom I'm so grateful for. He really helps with trying to teach a class of such varied levels. It really is more like three levels in one, 0-2. One guy is very much a beginner!

After the tour, each student was given the choice of either a caramel or vanilla latte or a mocha. Below, Yuen from Hong Kong is watching our tour guide, Mindy, making lattes. It was a fun end to the tour for them. Most of them have obviously had coffee and/orn coffee with milk, but there were some who had never had a 'proper' latte.

These are various pictures of the tour showing the bags being filled and sealed, a different roast of beans being added to make a certain blend, and espresso shots.The guy in the black jacket I call the "Mongolian Gangster". He doesn't know what it means...neither do the rest of them for that matter! Gangster is not usually a word that they know at these levels!