About this site

This site is a journal of our time in Cyprus, from the first stressful months in late 1997 when we first moved here, until the present date. I began the site, using records from letters I had written and notes I'd kept, back in about 2000 on the Geocities servers. We registered the RSDT domain using the initials of our first names.

When the site reached the Geocities 14 megabyte limit, early in 2005, I started my Cyprus blog to continue writing about life in Cyprus - primarily for family and friends. I did not intend to do anything more to the RSDT site, but in the Spring of 2009 it was announced that all Geocities sites would be closed down in October. So I decided to transfer the RSDT site to the server where my other sites are, and redesign to make it look more up-to-date and more easily navigable.

About me

My name is Sue. I come from Birmingham, in the UK, and my Myers-Briggs type is INFJ. I met Richard while I was in the sixth form studying A-levels, and we were married in the summer of 1980.  I did a degree in maths from Birmingham University, then worked for some years as a programmer for Severn-Trent water authority, before leaving to have our two sons, Daniel and Timothy, in the late 1980s.  During the period when they were small, I did some more freelance programming at home, and later worked as a registered chiild-minder. We are Christians, and attended first St Stephen's Church, Selly Park and then its daughter church, known initially as 'Church Centre' and later - when it became its own parish - Christchurch, Selly Park.

From 1992-1994 we lived in Colorado Springs in the USA, where I first started to use email, and 'bulletin boards' which were the precursors to Internet forums. Daniel went to a local school, which was not a good experience. Timothy was not old enough for school (they don't start until six in that region) so spent two years at home, where he became a fluent reader, a competent speller, and considerably more computer literate than me.

From 1994-1997 we returned to Birmingham, where the boys were very happy at St Francis Church of England primary school. I became a parent volunteer in classrooms in their school, and also took a correspondence writing course, which led to a few letters and articles being published in magazines. I also wrote a basic guide for teachers learning to use computers in school, in conjunction with my husband Richard.

In 1997 we moved to Cyprus, initially for two years. After Daniel's bad experiences in the Colorado school, he suggested we try home educating for our first year, while we settled in. The staff at the boys' school were encouraging about this, although I assumed they would both go to school after the first year. They were nine and eleven when we moved. We quickly discovered the many benefits of home education, however, and kept going. The book Free Range Education: How Home Education Works has a chapter which I wrote, which explains more fully how we began our home educating, and why we decided to continue.

We stayed in Cyprus much longer than expected - and are still here. We rented a house for the first nine years, then sold our house in Birmingham in the spring of 2006, and bought a house in Cyprus.  

I started blogging in 2005, started reviewing for the Bookbag site at the end of 2006, and joined a local Christian writers' group in the spring of 2007.  You can read more about our family at my Cyprus blog, about life here in general at my Living in Cyprus site, and reviews of all the books I have read in the past ten years (currently a little over 1000) on my Book Reviews blog

When Daniel had finished all the academic studying he wanted to do while home educating, he worked for a year at the local Antidote Theatre.  He then spent two years working on the 'floating book ship' MV Doulos from January 2006. He came home for three months in January 2008, worked for two months in Carlisle, training in audio-visual work, and then returned to the Doulos for two more years, taking on the role of audio-visual manager.

When the Doulos was decommissioned at the end of 2009, he returned to the UK to work full-time in Carlise, where he was married to Becky at the end of April 2011.  Their son David was born in June 2014, and their daughter Esther at the end of 2016. Daniel's current activities, from time to time, can be found on his blog brummie@sea.

Timothy worked for two years as a church organist, and studied for a certificate of higher education with the Open Theological College. He applied to university in the UK in January 2008, and was offered a place at Newman College in Birmingham, to study Theology for Education. He started there in September 2008, and completed his degree in May 2011.

Tim then worked as a freelance programmer for a while to fund his Masters' Degree,which he completed in 2013. He moved back to Cyprus for three years, working at a local private school where he was responsible for all music and IT, including doing his PGCE in his final year. He was then accepted for a post as music teacher at a small school in the UK, and moved back there in the summer of 2016