Life in Cyprus - November 2000
Nov 21st
It almost felt chilly today and we're all wearing sweatshirts. At night it is definitely cooler though the sun mostly shines in the daytime, so that warms the place up a bit. But our house does tend to stay fairly cool, which is good, since we just received some parcels from the UK, intended for Christmas, which took less than a week to arrive - and which we know contain some chocolate,among other things!
On Saturday we spent the day with some homeschooling friends in Nicosia, who have four children. They're younger than ours, but their oldest son is nine, and pretty friendly with Tim. We had lunch together and then went for a walk in a very nice park near their house: it was like a huge garden attached to a monastery. There's a fountain, and an aviary of sorts, and very pleasant walks - all beautifully laid out and very clean.
Tim has joined the inter-church Christmas choir as usual, though this time he's the only child. In fact he's probably the only person under 35!! Daniel will be playing his clarinet in the concert but no longer likes to sing. Tim is singing alto this year as he can no longer sing the high soprano notes; I think he's enjoying the challenge. The concert is on December 15th in the Town Hall.
The big event in Larnaka
this week is the arrival of the ship LOGOS II, that belongs to
the mission organisation Operation Mobilisation. They have two
ships which travel the world, stopping at various places and
taking meetings etc. I've never been on either of them before,
though Richard has.
This ship will dock in Larnaka for about three weeks, when the team will be leading services in the various churches, and also doing a slot in the Christmas concert in the town hall. They have meetings on board too, and a large bookshop which people can browse. They're taking the service at our church next Sunday.
Nov 29th:
As I write it's absolutely
pouring outside. We're having the most unusual weather this year,
for Cyprus. Currently it's more like England in a typical November
- temps 10 to 15C at most, and it's rained continually since
Monday night. We haven't seen the sun since Sunday pm. The forecast
does suggest it's going to clear up at the weekend so we're hoping
that, for once, it's correct.
On Monday night we had incredible thunderstorms reminiscent of Colorado, with strikes every few seconds for over an hour. And rain so heavy it came through a couple of places in the roof - it does this if the wind is in a certain direction apparently. Thankfully the rain since then has been more like British rain than tropical rain, and hasn't come through at all. The cats don't like it one bit!
Of course all this rain is excellent for the farmers, and also from the water shortage point of view, but there have apparently been serious landslides in the mountains and flooding waist-high in Paphos. It's not that bad here. We put out a pot to measure the rain before the first (light) rain Monday pm, and it was at about 2 inches by yesterday mid-morning. That's a lot for 24 hours here! I don't know what it is now - it's raining much too heavily to go and check and I'm wondering how on earth I'm going to dry two loads of laundry which I did yesterday (as the mains water was on). One is hanging on my indoor clothes horse thingy feeling damp, the other is still in the machine. People generally don't have tumble driers here - in three years I can only think of one or two times when I might have used one, and the thought of adding yet more humidity into the atmosphere is not a pleasant one.
Daniel is now in the town band, with practices every Monday and Thursday night (8pm-9pm) so it's a good thing we have a car now. He could walk, but it's dark by that time, and getting colder, so Richard runs him there and collects him. His first performance will be in a concert a couple of days before Christmas.
We're still waiting to hear whether we can keep our car or not, although as the officials didn't tell us NOT to use it, Richard has continued to drive it! It's proving very reliable so far, and a good thing to have - with Daniel now in the local town band,which has rehearsals from 8pm-9pm twice a week, it's good to be able to take and fetch him as it's dark and chilly by then.
Also Richard has had to do a lot of driving to meet various people, so again it's been invaluable - perfect timing as we've never needed a car until now. His 'pink slip' (residence permit for another year) arrived recently so he'll go to the office in Nicosia soon - that was the next thing required by the car registration people. However my brother and his wife are visiting us for the first week of December, so we'll wait until they have left as we don't want to be without a car next week!