This early stage of the project has been primarily about passion. The Tongue Team started out with passions and ideas all over the place and some confusion on how to interpret the parameters of “tongue” and unify ourselves. This process began with a dump of ideas and the back and forth that comes along with inspired people bouncing all their ideas off of each other. During the first few meetings of our group (in class and outside of class), we had the loose interpretation of tongue as language and the diffusion of culture through the Silk Roads. With this vague topic we attempted to narrow in on either a specific route traveled throughout time, a specific region, a group of people, or a time period. We needed to ground ourselves in one of these areas, but this task seemed fairly impossible to accomplish without knowing more about any group of people, route or time. Recommendations of following the Maritime route and spices were given to us, yet we still didn’t seem sure of that; we didn’t feel sparked from that route or the time period of the 13th Century C.E.
Nothing had fallen into a place that felt right for our group, so we kept moving pieces around and bouncing new and changing ideas off of each other. Chris, Zach, Delaney, and I met in the library to flesh out a solid concept for our group to unify around. Through a very enthusiastic conversation that kept bringing us from tangent to tangent of different possibilities, we landed on an idea that had us more inspired than any other: a meal. The topic of food and the cultural diffusion of cuisine had been circulating for some time, but had not taken the forefront of our group’s mind until this discussion. Once the topic of food was focused in on, the ideas bounced around faster and with growing excitement. The idea that cinched the topic of food for us was the concept of choosing one meal in order to break down and zoom out from in the different directions of the specific components of that meal. We also decided that a meal was not just going to mean cuisine for us, but also the traditions that came along with the preparation, serving, and customs of the food and eating of the food. Each of us would choose part of the meal (the beverage served, the bread, the meat, the way in which it was served and by whom, etc) and conduct our own research about the history, context, and significance of that piece of the meal.

The next stage of evolution for our team was the location and time period of this meal, which brought us to the nomads of the steppe region in a very early time period; roughly 3rd Century CE Xiongnu Empire. What we very quickly figured out was that this group of people and time was not going to work out. The Xiongnu did not write and therefore the knowledge we have of them is scarce. The suggestion by Eric to focus on a modern meal and trace back each component set us on the track we are now ploughing forward on.  
The foundation on which we plan on building our project off of is this: the etymology of a meal in Kashgar. We chose Kashgar, because it holds a mix of many cultures along the Silk Road. Kashgar is a fairly central location along the Silk Road, and one that holds geographical significance as it is an Oasis city and would have encountered a lot of traffic of merchants and travelers over time. The etymology piece of our project is the key component; each member of our team will be exploring a part/a few parts of the meal through time and space along the Silk Road. The meal itself will act as the glue that holds our respective components together and enables those separate pieces to become more digestible to our audiences (pun intended).
At this point in time, the breakdown of our team is based on experimental research that will determine what meal we choose and will help us to narrow in on our individual pieces of the meal through the process of starting with large research and slowly zooming in. Zach, the presenter, is looking into the beverages consumed in Kashgar, the significance of these drinks, how they were drunk, the processes of making these drinks, and how the culture around food diffused out of and into Kashgar. Delaney, the recorder, is focusing her research on the food customs in Kashgar as well as the significance of folklore; how folklore has diffused knowledge about food and traditions around food. Chris, the facilitator, is researching the ingredients common in Kashgar dishes: spices, meats/animal products, pasta, etc; he will be mapping out where these ingredients originated from, how they were used by themselves and in larger meals, and their significance within the culture of food in Kashgar. My personal role is that of the timekeeper, and my research is on the different kinds of preparation of food in Kashgar, equipment used, and the methods of cooking. I am very interested in learning the different ways meats, breads, and other components of dishes were cooked; what kinds of tools were used, what form of cooking did different meals have, what were ingredients cooked in and how were those pieces of equipment made. Bread has become a special area of focus for me, because of its importance within a meal and the especially delicious ways that bread is made and cooked in Kashgar.
The technological component of this project was initially intimidating to me, because I thought I would have to learn skills such as coding that would be an added challenge to an already challenging team project. On the contrary, however, WordPress seems clean and straightforward. Seeing the skeleton of the website we will be adding flesh to made the project seem real for the first time and built up the anticipation of seeing all the separate components of the individuals and groups start to come together on it.
While sometimes confusing and slightly stressful, this has been an extremely fun and rewarding process thus far. Our group feeds off each other’s enthusiasm and inspiration in a way that creates really wonderful products and a kind of cohesion that can often be hard to accomplish in group projects. I think our passions are what drive the group, which has been vital so far, but might hurt us along the road when our passions keep us from making concrete decisions. I have high hopes for our team, our explorations, and our creations.