Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Comings and Goings

One of the strange things about living here is that many people who become friends stay for only a short time. Although there are an increasing number of Brits and other ex-pats who retire here, and plan to stay long-term, there are great numbers of folk who come just for two or three years. Then, perhaps harder to deal with, are those who stay for perhaps six or more years, but eventually return to their native lands. This year quite a few of our friends seem to be departing for good, and it's going to leave quite a hole.

Last night and this morning we said goodbye to a family from Limassol, who we got to know through the home educators' group (which no longer exists, since so many home educators left the island and nobody wants to run it any more). We hadn't seen them very often in recent months, but as families we all got along well and really enjoyed our times together. They came to stay here overnight as their flight to the USA was at 10am this morning; they arrived about 6pm so I'd cooked a meal for us all. We had a pleasant evening doing various things and catching up on news since we last saw them in January. We'll miss them...

UK house update: the lady buying has signed a contract, at last, and apparently the deposit will now be transferred. But contracts are still not exchanged. Her solicitor is now re-asking some questions which we thought had been sorted out nearly two months ago. These ongoing delays are unbelievably stressful.

For those who also follow Daniel's news, I had an IM 'chat' with him this morning, and an email update which I've posted to his blog. The Doulos has just arrived in India, where the temperatures are soaring. He's pretty tired after several nights on firewatch, and feeling a little down, so if anyone wants to leave him any comments I'm sure he'd appreciate them.

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