Friday, August 05, 2005

Friday again

Yes, another week has whizzed by. At least summer doesn't drag here, despite not much happening. As I sit here in my tee-shirt and shorts in the air-conditioning (albeit not as effective as it should be) listening to the cicadas chattering outside, a frappé just waiting to be finished next to me, I realise life is good. Despite frustrations, now and again, we're thankful to live in this pleasant and safe environment with so many modern comforts.

On Fridays we usually do our weekly supermarket shop. Mostly we go to Metro, but having discovered recently that Chris cash'n'carry supermarket is well laid-out with a good selection of products, reasonably priced, we decided to try going there once a month - or maybe every other week - as a variation.

This week some of our regular junk mail told us that Chris supermarket had special offers on some things we would buy anyway, so we went there today. It's the first time we've done an ordinary grocery shop there, and once again I was impressed at the way the shop is laid out. Things are mostly very easy to find, and there's a fair amount of choice with more pre-prepared and frozen products than Metro. We bought a couple of the ready-made mushroom quiches for a quick meal, for instance.

On the other hand, I couldn't find fresh broccoli or cauliflower anywhere, although there was a good selection of soft fruit (grapes, nectarines, peaches etc). Not necessarily a problem since directly over the road is a huge fruit-and-vegetable shop, but we didn't have time to visit that today. More significantly, I couldn't find any free-range eggs. I won't buy battery farm eggs, so that's a point against Chris. Ah well, we have enough eggs to last us until next week's visit to Metro.

[It occurs to me after posting that the ready-made quiches almost certainly used battery eggs. A dilemma which hadn't occurred to me at the time. Not much I can do about that, really. It's only two months of the year when it's too hot to make real quiches, which of course we make with free-range eggs.]

Yesterday Tim went with some of the youth group to the Waterworld park in Ayia Napa. Someone had been able to get a substantial discount so they went in for £7 each. Usually it's twice as much. Although some of our visitors from the UK had been there, none of us had ever felt tempted before. We're not really keen on either theme parks or water, and most people we know who visit come back very badly sunburned. The whole park is outside, and it's only open in hot months of the year.

However Tim used factor 30 sunscreen (left behind by one of our guests) several times, and returned without a trace of burning. He said it was great. The only problems were that they had to queue for up to half an hour for some of the rides, as the place was so crowded, and that the food was pretty poor quality. Nobody is allowed to take food into the park (though most people take drinks in their bags) as there are three or four restaurants. Unfortunately the food is mostly poor-quality junk, and vastly over-priced.

3 comments:

Lora said...

Your as funny as I am about grocery stores. The last city we lived in I shopped at four different stores to get all the products I require and to get good prices. Plus I tried to be aware of all the sales and use coupons. It was nothing but a great big hassle and time waster.

When we move to Austin I found that the nearest grocery store had 90 percent of what I wanted with reasonable prices. I've compromised on 5% and just use what they carry instead and the other 5% I stock up on when I make a special trip to Whole Foods or Central Market about once a month. We plan I moving to a different part of town in a few months and I'm actually anxious because I'll have to find different grocery store.

We must be efficent you know?

Brad Williams said...

Sue,

I'm enjoying reading about your life in Cyprus. You guys are "freelance missionaries"? I'm going to try and find out more by reading your blog. Are you guys trying to start a church, help a church, or something else? In the meantime, I'll be reading. Have a great day!

Sue said...

Ah. Well 'freelance' in this context just means we're not paid a salary as such; our support comes directly from individuals and churches. We're connected with a mission agency but not one that can be mentioned publicly. Reading Richard's work blog (linked in my side-bar) will give a clue about what kind of work he does. It's basically using media to support other missionaries in other countries which aren't as safe as Cyprus.