Living in Cyprus - October 1998
20th October
Home
education is going very well and it’s nice to have the flexibility to
take time off whenever we like. So we just had our second ‘half-term’
break with Richard’s mother here (the first being when my brother was
here in September). It seems such a long time since the
summer.
Daniel enjoys home education so much that he’s not sure he would ever want to go to school again, even if/when we return to the UK. He loves the freedom from timetable, and being able to take as long as he wants over everything - or to stop when he’s finished something rather than being limited to lesson times. I think he would have found the highly structured system at secondary school particularly difficult, so perhaps it’s just as well we’re out here.
French is fun with Linguaphone and CD-Roms, and I'm feeling a lot more confident about their education in general. We’ve found a wonderful art class for them on Saturday mornings, run by a Cypriot art teacher (who speaks excellent English) which is relaxed and flexible. Tim didn’t really want to go at first as he doesn’t much like art, and doesn’t consider himself very good at it, but we persuaded him to try out the first one and he had a great time. It’s a couple of hours so they get a lot done, and the teacher helps each person individually with suggestions and constructive criticism.
Tim has begun the guitar at last and seems to be enjoying it; he’s only learned two chords so far but is doing a lot of exercises. Daniel is continuing with the town band leader learning clarinet; the teacher offered to let him take Grade 4 in a few months but Daniel said he didn’t really want to, so that’s fine. He’ll do the work anyway. He’s also playing in the newly formed ‘band’ at Church - drums, bass guitar and keyboard now play with the piano, and Daniel on the clarinet.
Every week I get email of the order of service to produce the bulletin, so we type the melody lines from ‘Songs of Fellowship’ into Noteworthy and transpose for the clarinet. This usually happens Thursday afternoon, then Daniel quickly runs through the songs to make sure they’re playable (occasionally the transposed key is so awful he can’t, but that’s not very often), then the band has an hour’s practice on Friday lunchtimes and for half an hour before Church on Sunday. It’s sounding very good and as the Church is currently quite full - there must have been 100 people there last weekend - it’s nice to have something more than just the piano to lead the worship. Daniel is growing enormously in confidence and virtually sight-reading some of the songs without difficulty.
Both boys are continuing with piano lessons; Daniel is still keen on classical pieces, and Tim prefers folk songs and hymns, so he’s now following the Michael Aaron course while Daniel continues with the Fanny Waterman one. Tim also likes doing his own harmonising and has been delighted to find out that if the left hand of something is too difficult he can simply play the right hand while making up his own chords with the left. It’s sounding remarkably proficient and he’s spending a lot of time doing this.
Daniel is teaching himself several computer languages, even working on C++ now which is not easy, but widely used commercially. Every time he learns a new technique in maths he now writes himself a program on the computer to do the same thing, which I’m sure helps him understand and remember what he’s learnt more fully. It’s a big advantage with home education of course!
Daniel didn’t want any kind of party for his twelfth birthday, particularly as Richard's mother was here, so instead we all went out to eat at one of the restaurants on the sea front, and then had a yogurt ice cream at the little shop at the far end. It was a little cooler and we felt chilly by the time we’d finished the ice cream; however I didn’t mind as it was rather nice since it's been too hot for the past couple of months!
Cleo the black kitten continues to grow and become more affectionate - she goes to greet all our visitors lovingly, so we just hope she doesn’t try and be too friendly to strangers who don’t like cats, particularly some Cypriots who consider them a pest and might kick her. She’s exploring further and further afield but still comes back when called and likes to sleep on beds at night.
We’re delighted to learn that there’s going to be new regulations meaning that animals can be taken from rabies-free areas to other rabies-free areas without quarantine, although of course we don’t have to worry about that just yet. Richard is hoping to be staying longer than our initial two years if it all works out; so far the signs are hopeful on the whole. We expect to visit the UK for Christmas 1999 and the millenium and perhaps a few months longer, but may well then return here for another couple of years or even more.
The
weather has, slowly, been getting less unpleasant. Really August was
the worst with extreme humidity and high temperatures, and although our
house stays reasonably cool there was nothing we could do about the
humidity. Now it’s only up to about 28C in the daytime and quite chilly
at night, so we’ve even put our duvets back on the beds after two
months with nothing but sheets! It gets dark by about 6.30pm and the
temperature drops a lot then.
It would be a good time of year to do some gardening but it’s still a bit too hot in the day and as it’s dark so early that it’s difficult after supper. It feels like Summer in the UK except for the short days. There hasn’t been any rain yet during October and the reservoirs are still extremely low so everyone is praying for a wet winter. If it’s only average this year then there will still be very low water supplies; the last three winters have been much drier than usual.
Our garden is looking rather dry at the moment after the lack of rain - we do water a few things when we have mains water but try to keep it to a minimum. The bougainvillea I had for my birthday has flourished and is now bright pink at the ends, starting to climb around our porch.
We’ve had pomegranates for the past few weeks and have quite enjoyed them although they came all at once. Now we’re finding they’re splitting on the trees and attracting wasps and flies so they’re just about past their best. Still, some of the lemon trees have small green lemons on them and the orange tree has large green oranges so it won’t be long before we have our citrus crop again. I’m amazed how well they grow with no watering, but there’s supposed to be a water table below the surface which reaches trees with big enough roots.
Insects haven’t been too bad lately, there are a few mosquitoes and the flies are a nuisance during the daytime, but we have bats in the garden at dusk and they seem to eat a lot. Last year when we'd just arrived we found mosquito bits extremely itchy, but we seem to have adapted now, and they're just mildly irritating for a few minutes.