RSDT

Here are a few photos showing our family, our house, and life here in Cyprus in 2002. You should be able to click on any of them to get bigger pictures.

Music in our house

On New Year's Day, 1st January2002 Richard spent some time with some of our home educating friends helping them make a family video. Their children spent the day at our house, and spent some of their time - as ever - playing various pieces of music together. This photo shows a piano - keyboard - clarinet attempt which unfortunately wasn't very successful since our piano can't be tuned to concert pitch - it's too old. The keyboard could be de-tuned to match the piano, but the clarinet simply couldn't be made to sound right with them, no matter how much it was transposed.

Weeds in our garden

Despite our best efforts, the weeds grew rapidly as soon as the rain started. There was no way I could keep pulling them up, and our strimmer didn't begin to cope. So we finally decided to spend some Christmas money on a lawnmower - and although we only bought a fairly lightweight electric one (light enough for me!) the results were quite amazing - see below for how the garden improved later in the year. This picture shows them at their worst near the start of January.

Country dancing in Limassol

We always enjoy the monthly gatherings with home educators, and the weather is usually good! Here some of us are at a meeting in February, at the home of one of the families who live in Limassol. They overlook a reservoir, which was fuller than we had ever seen it before, due to the vast amount of rain we had this winter.

Old rusty water tanks

Our cold water tank was a bit rusty when we moved into the house, so we never used it for drinking water as there's a separate mains tap. However by February this year there were visible holes, and it looked as though mosquitoes were starting to breed in the cold water tank. We contacted our landlady, who agreed to have it replaced with a modern tank, so I took this picture showing what the old one looked like.

Our garden looking a little better

With regular mowing, and some weeding and rock-moving, the garden began to look almost as if it had a lawn by March - at least from a distance! We had one or two barbecues outside, as the weather is perfect at this time of year. Unfortunately as soon as Greek Orthodox Lent begins (not quite the same as our Lent) we can no longer cook meat outside, since the Orthodox don't eat any meat during Lent, and it would hardly be fair to waft barbecue smells around our neighbours.

The hailman!

Some friends came out to stay with us at the end of March. They had been before, about the same time of year, so were not really prepared for the wet spring we were having. One day we had hailstones as a variation from the rain - almost marble-sized, so potentially quite dangerous, and they stayed on the ground for quite some time. One of our friends decided to be creative, so he built this 'hailman' in our back garden, and it took at least a day before it had completely melted.

More rain in Cyprus

This shows one of the days when the rain was pouring down in April. We don't often get British-style drizzle in Cyprus; when it rains, it really rains! Our car was parked over the road and looked remarkably clean afterwards. There aren't drains in most of the roads, so for a while we had quite a stream of water pouring down the street, but it soon evaporated once the sun came out.

Our garden in late April

So long as the camera was positioned carefully, and the sun was shining, and the 'lawn' (an approximate term since it's at least 80% weeds) had been recently cut, the garden was very pleasant by the end of April, greener than ever due to all the rain we'd had at the beginning of the month.

Our bougainvillea

My parents bought me a Bougainvillea four years ago, which we planted in our front garden. It was only about 60cm high, and I knew nothing about these plants! However several people in our street had gorgeous ones so we decided the location was probably good. Sure enough, it grew rapidly that first summer, and each year it's had more and more pink bracts from about April through the summer. Here it is in May, when's at its best.

Good Friday march in Larnaka

Eastern Easter was late this year, falling in early May. On Good Friday evening, several of the Greek Orthodox Churches decorate coffins with flowers, and process with them to a central meeting place for a short service. The town band slow-march from St Lazarus Church at one end of the sea-front. Here is one of the church groups.

Tent at Troodos

Each year recently the home educators' island-wide group has spent a few days camping on Troodos, at a place with ready-erected tents. This year we went at the end of June. There were some new family-sized tents, to replace the very old ones which were getting rather mildewy inside, and we were the first to use them.

Nature walk at Troodos

One of the home educating group is an expert in biology and chemistry, and enjoys doing nature walks with the children. Here's a group looking at various objects around the Troodos camp-site, learning a lot with informal questions and discussion.

Tim in London

We only spent ten days in the UK this year, again during July. Theatre Antidote, the drama group Daniel joined in January, won an international competition which meant that the teenage group came to London to perform 'Nuts' at the National Theatre. Here's Tim as we, and my parents, spent the afternoon in London prior to seeing the performance.

Daniel juggling in Sussex

Afterwards we went down to Richard's mother in Sussex. Daniel had bought several new pieces of juggling equipment while in London, and spent considerable time learning to use them.

Tim's Confirmation in Larnaka

In August Tim was confirmed at St Helena's Anglican Church, by Bishop Clive of Cyprus and the Gulf. Although we usually attend the Larnaka Community Church (where there are far more children) we all went to the service at St Helena's that morning, and a very pleasant celebration lunch afterwards.

Our living-room as it was

In the Autumn we finally got around to repainting most of the inside of the house, which was looking rather tatty. All the walls had magnolia paint on them when we moved in, and it was getting distinctly grubby as well as being rather boring. But here's a view of our living room in August, as it was for our first few years here.

Tim cuts the grass

In September the weather slowly starts to cool, and it becomes possible to do a bit of work outside in the evenings - even though by now it's getting dark shortly after 6.30pm. Here's Tim working hard to cut some of the weeds in the back garden.

Dan's room after repainting

The first room we redecorated was Daniel's. All round the house there is light boarding up to about 1.5 metres high, which covers up the damp in the plaster that rises in most houses here. So we decided that we would paint the ceilings and upper parts of the walls in off-white colours, and the lower parts in darker, brighter colours. Dan chose an attractive blue that matched well with his curtains. On the walls is some of his own artwork.

Tim's room after repainting

In early October we repainted Tim's room. This took rather longer because the ceiling was in a very bad state of repair due to repeated leaks last winter. These had been repaired - at last! - but much of the plaster was flaking. We had to coat it first with a mixture of PVC glue and water to seal it, and even then it still flaked a bit and became gungy. However at last it was ready, and looked very attractive with peach paint on the lower part of the walls.

Living room after repainting

The living-room/dining-room was a major undertaking since they're really two rooms knocked into one, but there is no way of making them separate so dust from one goes directly to the other. We did this over two weekends in October, piling the furniture into the other half of the room temporarily. We chose a green-turquoise colour to blend in with the curtains in the dining room, and were very pleased with the effect once we had finished.

Daniel's Baptism in Larnaka sea

Dan decided to be baptised in November. Our church does this by full immersion in the sea, so a date was chosen as early as possible. The sun shone and the sea was lovely and warm for him, which made it all the more pleasant. The ceremony happened after our morning service. Here he is just afterwards, with a towel around his neck, looking at his certificate.

Visit to Paphos

Richard's mother came to stay in November, and although the weather started to get cooler it was still sunny and reasonably warm most days. We drove to Paphos one day - it takes about an hour and a half with the motorways that have been built in the last few years. Here we are sitting on a wall by the fort.

The Frog Prince

This year Daniel took part for the first time in a main production with the drama group, 'The Frog Prince' in December. He took the title role, but as there were only four in the cast all the parts were major! He's on the left of the picture in a brilliantly constructed frog head.

Cleo, Tessie and the Christmas tree

Although we don't make a huge thing of Christmas, we do usually put up an artificial tree in December, and place the family presents underneath. Here are two of our cats, Cleo and Tessie, investigating what's going on and managing to pull one of the branches down!