Greek yogurt and unpleasant insects in Cyprus

One of the things we like in Cyprus is the Greek yogurt, which is widely available and not too expensive. It comes in tubs like this:

Yes, that's a litre of thick (set) Greek yogurt. It's the live, low-fat version which doesn't taste particularly different from other non-live and high-fat versions. We buy it by the litre since we get through about that much in a week. I use a good scoop on muesli at breakfast-time, the cats like a spoonful or two each day on a saucer, and we use it as a topping on desserts, on the rare occasions when we have desserts.

Unlike the flimsy little pots that small, fruity yogurt comes in (and here they're almost all horrible artificially sweetened non-live ones, so we don't buy those) the Greek yogurt tubs are quite sturdy. Re-cycling simply doesn't happen in Cyprus, but we certainly re-use these tubs. So far we've used them - or seen them used - for:

• buckets at the beach for collecting water or making sandcastle turrets
  
• containers for pens and pencils
• baskets for collecting small eggs at Easter egg hunts
• plant pots
• food storage tubs
• containers for washing out paint brushes
  

In our house, though, they have another very important function. During the summer, if you wandered around our house during the morning, you might well see something like this:


- a Greek yogurt pot, upside down on the floor. I keep a supply of empty ones on the fridge, and - during the summer - at least one in the bathroom.

Why?

Well, one of the not-so-good things about Cyprus is the (shudder) cockroaches. Ten years ago, I couldn't bring myself to say or even type the word. But they're a fact of life here. During the summer months - mid-May till mid-October - they come out of the septic tanks and drains where they live, and crawl around outside. Or up drains into sinks. Or, if they're at the ends of their lives, they fly.

And so, sometimes, one or two get into our house. I try and remember to close all the windows as soon as it gets dark. But we leave the bathroom window open - it's on the third floor, and only just big enough for a cat to get in and out of, so quite safe - and I don't always remember to leave the light on. Nor do I always remember to leave the plug in the bath overnight.

So when I get up in the morning, at this time of year, I go very cautiously, keeping my eyes peeled in case of finding a cockroach. Usually it's upside down and dead - the cats are handy here, as they don't like any intruders running around. Besides that, once they start flying - and they have to fly to get to our bathroom window - they're pretty much at their last stages anyway.

Even so, they make me shudder. I can't bear to look at them. So I grab an empty yogurt put, and shove it down over the top of any roaches lying around. And there they stay, until Richard sees them, and disposes of them.

So if you happen to be in our house during the summer, and see an empty yogurt pot lying on the floor... just leave it. Unless of course you're happy to dispose of what you might find underneath.

Water restrictions in Larnaka - new schedule

We've been getting used to the water restrictions in Larnaka, imposed since the start of April. We had mains water switched on from about 8am to 8pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and mostly on Sunday mornings too.

So I made a few adjustments - only doing laundry and watering plants on those days, for instance - and the restrictions did make us even more careful than we had been, so as not to waste water. But our cold water tank was more than sufficient for showers, toilet flushing, and even running the dishwasher.

I suppose it couldn't last. Local people are still washing their cars, and hosing down their patios and the streets outside. They can't do these things every day, of course, and some of them have stopped, or at least cut down... but every week I would still see water flooding down the streets from somebody using their hosepipe without a thought to what it would do to the water supply.

Last Sunday, the water did not come on. That didn't worry me too much, since Sunday was always a bonus.

Then yesterday - Monday - in the afternoon, I happened to move the mains water switch and it came on, to my surprise. I thought perhaps it was our bonus instead of Sunday, so I filled up the drinking water bottles we had used, and washed some fruit and veg.

This morning, Tuesday, when we were expecting mains water, nothing happened.

I saw a friend at the Mothers and Toddlers group, where I help once a week, and she said that her schedule had been Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but theirs did not come on on Monday...

Then another friend said she had heard that there were now new restrictions in place: two days with no mains water, then one day with the water on. A three-day cycle rather than a weekly cycle.

So we shall see. If that's the case, then we won't have any water tomorrow, either, but we will on Thursday. I decided I had better water the plants on our front porch since the last time I watered them was Saturday. Instead of using the outside pipe (which is attached to the mains) I went into our guest flat and filled the watering can from the water (from the tank) there.

It's going to be harder adjusting to this new schedule, if that's what it is, particularly if we have water on different days each week. But no doubt we'll get used to it in a couple of months... by which time they'll probably come up with yet another schedule for water.

General family updates

It's a month since Daniel left Cyprus again, to go to Carlisle. It feels a great deal longer, somehow. It probably does for him, too, as he's been learning a great deal, meeting new people, and exploring new places. If anyone wants to know more about what he's doing, I recommend his blog Brummie at Sea - which he's been updating fairly often in the past few weeks.

Dan has heard - at last - that he should be returning to the Doulos around July 12th, when she will be in New Zealand. Flying from the UK to NZ is about as long a flight as is possible, as they're the opposite sides of the world.

Tim has been very busy in the past few weeks. As well as working on the last modules of the OTC (first year), which he wants to finish in the next month, he's been doing a lot of work at one of the local English-speaking private schools: helping in a classroom, teaching some music, sorting out problems with digital white-boards, and advising about their web-site.

Oh, and he's taking his Grade 8 piano exam on Monday, so he's had several extra piano lessons scheduled recently. I think there were four this week.

It's now a month until Tim leaves home, to move to Birmingham, since he's accepted a place at Newman University. I'm sure this month will fly past. I'm not at all looking forward to the 'empty nest'. I will actually be going with Tim to the UK for the first few weeks, a good excuse to escape the heat and humidity of Cyprus in July, and Richard will join us for a fortnight or so. But returning here in August without Tim is going to be very strange.

Richard is, as always, extremely busy with far too much to do in the office, and too few people. He still manages to go sailing most Saturdays, which does at least get him away from the office, computer, phone and so on.

I'm not sure what my future will hold, in the Autumn. I'm trying to do a bit more writing - websites and short stories, as well as blogging - but some days seem to rush by. We've had quite a flurry of visitors lately, and on days when it's hot and sticky, it's hard to get anything much done.

I had a bit of a shock this morning when I realised that my two main websites - Home education in the UK and Living in Cyprus - seem to have disappeared from Google's search pages. Instead of the usual 100 or so visitors to the home ed site in the first eight hours of the day, there were about twenty - and only three from Google's search engine. I hope it's just a temporary glitch.

Since it was so warm and muggy yesterday, I put away our thick duvet and replaced it with just a sheet. It was certainly warm enough last night, but today feels much fresher - thankfully - so perhaps I'll need to get the thin duvet out after all.

Summer will arrive in Cyprus very soon

After a warmer-than-usual (and much dryer) Winter in Cyprus, and a very pleasant Spring, it feels as if Summer is upon us. It's only a few degrees warmer than it was last week (perhaps 28-29C rather than 24-25C) but it's beginning to feel muggy. Tim and I both felt very tired and headachey yesterday, and I felt over-warm at times. Today two or three other people mentioned how sticky they were, and this evening around 5pm I felt that rush of humidity that always comes in the evenings during Cyprus summers.

I hope it's just a brief foretaste of things to come, rather than Summer itself - sometimes even early June can be relatively dry and pleasant - but it is the last week of May, so I suppose I should have been expecting it.

This week I'll switch our warm duvet for the thin one, and I suppose we should get the air conditioning serviced. We haven't even used the ceiling fans yet but will probably do so within the next few days.

The Tale of Tessie and the Turtle

Many years ago, when I was a student - I think it was when I was still in school - I was given a large furry stuffed turtle. I forget who made it, I don't even remember for certain who gave it to me, or why. I think perhaps they were cool at the time - or trendy, perhaps - I don't even know what word we used to describe that concept.

Anyway. The turtle sat in our living room at our house in the UK. Occasionally I sat on it; when Daniel and Tim were small, it was ideal as a seat for them. It stayed surprisingly clean, and in good condition, but when we moved to Cyprus back in October 1997 it wasn't a high priority to bring with us... so it was packed away in our house in Birmingham, along with many other random items.

We didn't see it again until September 2005, when we sorted our our UK house, in preparation for selling it, and brought a lot more things to Cyprus. Unfortunately, the turtle, along with some children's books, were in a wardrobe which we didn't discover until after we had packed and sent the freight. So we ended up leaving a few boxes in Richard's mother's attic.

Since then, we've brought a few more books back to Cyprus each time any of us has visited, but the turtle remained in the loft. Until January, when Daniel came back on his furlough. He and Richard spent a few nights with Richard's mother in the UK, and when Dan opened his luggage on arrival in Cyprus ... there was the turtle.

I was pleased to have it, but not entirely sure what to do with it. So I put it on the sofa-bed in my study, to start with. Shortly afterwards, I noticed Tessie sleeping nearby. She often sleeps on that sofa in the sun, and I was amused to see how similar the turtle's colours are to Tessie's:

As the days went by, Tessie seemed to decide that the turtle was a friend, and I moved it to the other side of the sofa. She always likes to cover her face with her paws when she's fast asleep, to keep out the light. Then she discovered that she could bury her face in the turtle, which is soft and furry:

Then she started snuggling up to it, even when she was awake. Poor Tessie was an abandoned kitten, so perhaps the turtle has become a kind of mother substitute:

As the weeks passed, she has become more and more friendly with it, now resting her head on the turtle's head, sometimes:

And, when she sleeps, she sometimes curls right around so as to fit alongside:


I wish I could remember if the turtle has a name... I'm sure it must have done at some point. But I'm pleased that Tessie likes it so much. I guess it will be staying on the sofa for the foreseeable future.

Purple trees in Larnaka, Cyprus

Usually, I love seeing blossom on trees. We don't have just one month for blossom in Cyprus; it starts with the almond trees (gorgeous white blossom) in about February, and then progresses through various other trees - whites and pinks and yellows - as the spring progresses.

Then suddenly, in May, we start to see purple blossom. Lots of it, particularly along Fanoroumani Street, where we walk to and from the town.


I have nothing against purple as a colour. But for some reason, I find it - or at least, this shade of purple - slightly disturbing on trees. It's really quite nice-looking blossom:


But there are so many of these trees in Larnaka! For most of the year, they're fairly ordinary looking, then one day they're all covered in purple.


I don't even know what they are. Maybe the problem is that the colour really does NOT go with the bright blue of the Cyprus sky in May.

Pentecost

In the Western church, today is Pentecost Sunday. We used to call it Whitsun - I'm not quite sure why it changed. I think tomorrow is still a public holiday in the UK (Whit Monday) but not in Cyprus. Pentecost here will be in five weeks time, since Greek Easter was only a fortnight ago. And Pentecost in Cyprus is a huge festival, with a week-long seafront fair, fireworks, parades and a regatta. It's known as Kataklysmos, and celebrates not just Pentecost, but Noah's flood.

However, the Protestant churches in Cyprus have made something of an effort to make Pentecost special. On Friday night there was a big African celebration in Antidote Theatre in Larnaka; last night there was a big Anglican-organised celebration in the amphitheatre at Dirinia, a little beyond Agia Napa.

Big celebration services are not really our style, but the youth group went to some of the African celebration on Friday - it's just over the road from where they meet - and the youth band were playing in yesterday's celebration. Richard had been asked to do the PA, so he went too. We had visitors staying with us, who weren't particularly keen, and I didn't really want to go either, so we stayed here.

This morning I took our visitors to St Helena's Anglican church in Larnaka; Tim was playing the piano, and the service focussed on Pentecost.

Our guests had to be at the airport by 1.45pm so we had an early lunch. Tim didn't want to cook - he knew he would be tired after last night - so we went to our favourite takeaway place, 'New York', for some roast chicken, roast potatoes, stuffed vegetables and various salads, and ate around 12.30.

On the way to the airport, I was pleased to see that the Salt Lake, which had been completely dry since about March, had water in it once again. The heavy rain on Thursday must have had more effect than we realised.

More visitors are arriving tomorrow evening, so I stripped the guest flat beds and put the sheets and towels on to wash in the afternoon, then hung them out on the line - I hope they'll be dry by the morning. It's been sunny since Friday morning, but not as warm as usual for this time of year - a very pleasant 23C during the daytime. If only it would stay this way!

Rain in Cyprus

I seem to have written a lot about the weather recently. But since it tends to be fairly extreme here - at least in the summer - and not necessarily predictable the rest of the year, we find it interesting. All the more so since we've started having water restrictions due to lack of rain - it's been the dryest winter I can remember - and of interest to Richard too, now he goes sailing most Saturdays.

We have three visitors in our guest flat this week. The weather has been perfect so far - about 25C and sunny during the daytime, cooler in the evenings. Today, however, was predicted to have grey skies and high winds. So they thought they would walk into the town (about a mile away) and do some shopping.

They never got out. Mid-morning the sky clouded over, and within about ten minutes it had started raining. Heavily enough that the roof over our stairs started leaking, as happens with rain in some directions.

It's rained off and on ever since. Tim had a piano lesson, and was caught in the rain on the way there. He pointed out that he's a Brit, so he doesn't mind rain. She said that English rain is just a bit grey, and drizzly, whereas the Mediterranean rain is hot-blooded, like Mediterranean people, so it POURS down. This is, of course, true. I don't think we'd ever seen rain like this until we moved to Cyprus.

Unfortunately photographs of rain don't really do it justice, but here's what it looked like out of my study window, anyway... just imagine pelting rain imposed on it.



I don't suppose that one day's rain will make more than a slight difference to the extreme water shortage around the island, but at least it's given all the plants a good watering, it's washed away some of the dust from the roof, and our car looks a great deal cleaner!