The Cyprus Way of Life

Wednesday

This was an uninteresting day because I only had Greek class in the morning and the rest of the day was free.  To be honest, I had a negative feeling all day about where I am.  There really is not much to do here and we're in kind of an isolated location, which is strange to say being that we are right in the city.  I can walk two minutes to the grocery and home goods store, two minutes to the university, and five minutes to just about everything else I need.  That is extremely convenient and so unlike home, but there is still not much to do.  I need to go outside the city limits and more into the old city to explore.  So my new goal is to find cheap transportation, like the bus, to explore this country that I will be calling home for 3 months.  

Thursday

Wednesday I was feeling negative about how vastly different this country is from the states, but today I am feeling blessed and extremely excited, and it's only 11 30am!  I just got back to the apartment from my Social Psychology class.  We were let out an hour early, yet I still took so much away from it.  They say here that Cyprus is unlike any other place and it is so very true.  Yes, I could have gone to Italy or Spain or France and seen beautiful views everyday...but I would not have experienced the culture quite like this.  People drive on the wrong side of the road here, they speak Greek (a very difficult language to learn), they eat very different food, everything is closed on Wednesdays, there are debates about whether Cyprus is part of Europe or part of the Middle East, and most importantly they have a history unlike any country in this entire world.  I have learned about their history more than I care to share but today it really meant something to me.  In my class our professor asked the Cypriots to talk about what it means to be from Cyprus.  The first word someone gave was 'invasion'.  That was amazing to me.  Their history is apart of who they are everyday, in a much broader way than it is for the US or any other country.  They are divided here and still feel the pain of that division and the war and the rape and the take over.  It's so sad but it is also a huge factor that they must deal with everyday.  This was a great country to take Social Psych in and I'm sooooo excited for it.  Yes the university is small and I feel like an outsider...and it's just not what I was hoping for, but I am going to be fully immersed in the culture and learn so much more.  It really will change who I am and change the way I think about the world-it already does.  I cannot wait!!  This is what studying abroad is all about and I am so ready to jump right in!