RSDT

April 11th:

Our friends, who were out for a fortnight, left for the UK yesterday afternoon. For the first week of their stay, the weather was quite awful - rain, hail, thunder etc, which was particularly miserable as we heard that the UK had unexpected sunshine and warmth.  I hope they were able to relax somewhat, even though it wasn't beach weather. We felt sorry for holidaymakers in hotels who only came for the week including Easter. I'm not sure what they would do if they couldn't get out on the beach.

Since last Friday the weather has been better, so on Sunday afternoon we went to Kiti beach for a couple of hours, and yesterday afternoon we went to McKenzy beach for an hour just before our friends were due at the airport. Too cold to do anything other than sit and read, but at least they saw a bit of sun.

As they'd been here a couple of times before, there wasn't anything they hadn't seen before - however our friend went go-karting with Richard one evening, as there's a new go-kart rink in Larnaka, and they went to the cinema one evening.  The boys continued their busy round of music and other activities, since Greek Orthodox Easter - the main one celebrated in Cyprus - is not for another three weeks.

We're taking a couple more days' break to relax, and will get back to the boys' home education coursework next Monday. There's another performance of Daniel's play this Friday, at the Antidote studio theatre where the group work, and then two or three more around the island during April and May. Tim is looking forward to getting back into a routine; Daniel on the other hand has been doing various constructive things - such as writing computer programs, and trying to create a Tolkienesque language - in between his many activities, and would happily continue without coursework forever.

The weather remains sunny but with a chill in the air - really quite windy by early afternoon. The temperature claims to be 20C in the shade, but I'm still wearing a light sweatshirt over my tee-shirt in the house. Perhaps we've adjusted better to the local temperatures, though; we do notice tourists and visitors going around in tee-shirt and shorts, while we're still in jeans and sweatshirts.

16th April:

It's raining again - it must have been the wettest Spring for years. The garden is looking pretty good - I'm managing to keep it tidy, and the grass/weeds short in the dry spells, and it's looking very green. 

We just had a busy Sunday. The 8-12s section of Daniel's drama group were doing their production on Sunday morning at 11am, and as two girls from our church are in this group, we went along to see it.

It was a production of 'The Emperor's New Clothes' and was very well done, with bright and cartoon-style costumes. We were amazed at how well the directors have done as it's a big group (there must have been 18 or so in the cast) and the whole thing ran smoothly with a lot of humour and excellent casting.

This afternoon the boys had a church music group practice at 3pm, since this evening was 'Singspiration' - a medley of songs, poems, performances and congregational songs, all chosen by members of the congregation, with people from other local church congregations invited. The whole programme was nearly two hours, and afterwards we had refreshments. While the boys had been at their music practice, I had been baking.

21st April:

Yesterday the weather was dreadful - drizzle all day long, and quite cold too for Cyprus in April. Today has dawned bright and sunny, so it's a pity that the rest of the family are somewhat under the weather with nasty colds. Daniel had to miss his clarinet lesson and band practices for the past week, as it's not possible to play with a blocked nose. Richard and Tim started it yesterday. I suppose the unexpected cool, wet weather has been a good breeding ground for germs. Various other people locally seem to have the same thing.

Richard's off to Lebanon this Tuesday evening for a conference, getting back early Friday morning, then he's going almost straight away to Paphos, where Daniel's drama group is doing the next performance of 'Nuts'. He's going to help with the video projector that they use between scenes.

April 29th:

We heard today that Daniel's theatre group won their part of the National Theatre competition! The directors got the cast together for a celebration this evening (including Richard as he'd made the video for them that was sent off). It was only against about nine other groups around the world (theirs was the least popular play of those selected) but still it's very exciting. Apparently one of the groups they beat was the Cambridge University theatre group.

This means Daniel will be performing in the play on July 11th at the National Theatre in London.  So we may see if we can all go back to the UK then. Daniel has to be in London by July 8th as the group are going to watch all the other winning performances during the week, but we'll try and extend the stay a bit, and see some relatives. 

Oh.. and the men finally arrived when I was least expecting them to replace our old rusty water tank with a brand new plastic one. Richard asked them to have a look at the scaffolding holding up the solar panels, as it was also rather rusty; they apparently decided the panels weren't really working, and replaced them too, after consultation with our landlady. So now we should have clean water from the tank, and more efficient solar heating. 

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