Coffee Swap Topic #3

So I was so late on getting to the last topic, that it is now time for a new topic of the week in the Coffee and Yarn Swap! I promise, that big post is still in the works, it's just really... big. Maybe I'll split it up more so that it doesn't take so long to read/write. Anyways, this week's topic is:

Tell us how you started drinking coffee. Were you in high school or college and making it through all nighters? Did you get it from a family member? What drives your love of the bean?

I started drinking coffee in high school, though all I really drank were the fancy lattes and mochas and such. My parents don't really drink coffee (my mom hates it and my dad only drinks it with company), so I never really had it around the house. I started drinking more traditional coffees when I went to Europe because they don't really have the Starbuck's style of cappuccino most places... it's a real espresso and foam cappuccino! It kind of threw me at first, but then it began to grow on me (though I still preferred the Jacob's Milka "cappuccino" mixes to straight up coffee over there ;o) ). Believe it or not, it really has been in the last 6 months that I started drinking just plain coffee. I had made espresso for myself and had choked down the swill they call coffee here at work, but never really had had a cup of "plain" coffee that I liked (except for on a mission trip in Costa Rica where we drank black coffee in the 90 degree weather of the afternoon after laboring away building a house because it was THAT good). When my boyfriend's mom came down for Thanksgiving, we warned her to bring her own coffee maker unless she wanted the thicker "Italian coffee" my stove top percolator puts out (it's yummy though!). So she brought hers down along with some of her own coffee. She made some and I decided to try it. Amazingly, it did not taste burnt or super bitter like other plain coffee I had tried! She very kindly said that the coffee maker was her "travel" one and left it here for us. I still prefer the flavored coffee to straight up dark black coffee, but who knows where this coffee maker will take me!