Not, after all, a beach picnic for the Cyprus home educators

Last summer, some of the Cyprus home educators met regularly at the beach during the summer months. Several of us thought it would be a good idea to do this again, now the weather's getting warmer. It was difficult to find a suitable evening, but eventually June 26th was proposed for the first gathering.

In Cyprus, the end of June is warm, and guaranteed sunny. Right?

Wrong.

During the afternoon, there were a few spots of rain. By about 4pm, it was raining quite significantly. I didn't worry... the odd summer shower usually dries up very quickly in Cyprus.

By 4.30, I wondered if the event would be cancelled. Richard called the friends who organised it and they said they were packing up to go, and that two other families were there already.

So we put our picnic together, and found our beach chairs and mats. We also found several kagoules and an umbrella since we couldn't see any sign of the rain abating.

Indeed, as we drove the couple of miles or so to McKenzie beach, it started tipping it down:


At least it had given Richard the opportunity to wear the new lightweight (but very waterproof) sailing jacket he bought with last year's birthday money:


When we got there, we found just one family; not the three we were expecting. They told us that the other two families had decided to go back to one of their homes to have their picnic there. But the remaining family was determined to swim:


Since I had my kagoule, and the rain did ease somewhat as we arrived, I thought I would at least wade out a little way into the water to see how warm it was:


It wasn't too bad, actually. Although I would not have wanted to swim!


Daniel and Becky had no problem staying warm:


We stayed for about fifteen minutes, I suppose. It was still raining, albeit fairly lightly by this time, and was definitely too wet to picnic on the beach. So we piled back into the car, and took our picnic to Jörn and Sheila's, where, with the other visiting family, we ate our picnic in their living room.

Katie asked me to comb her hair, and then put a clip in it. It wasn't a very thick clip, so I just put it at the back, and then took a photo so she could see what it looked like:


Daniel, meanwhile, had got hold of the dictionary. He and Marie were having fun finding some fascinating new words, which he then wrote in a sentence for her (although I have totally forgotten what they were).


Katie asked Becky to read her a book, and then produced a 'Magic School Bus' book, describing - as far as I could tell - the circulation system of the human body. It was quite a long book, and Lukas enjoyed it too.


Jacob then leaned over Daniel's shoulder, interested in yet more definitions in the dictionary:


Although we're no longer home educating, one never stops being a home educator. And it's so reassuring to see these moments when home educated children are happily doing what might be classed as English language (or biology, in the case of Lukas and Katie) for fun on a Saturday evening, and not because anybody has scheduled it for them.

Not to be outdone, Helen 'read' a book to Daniel:


Meanwhile, our friend Chris had picked up Marie's maths book, and was discussing something in it. So Marie joined him, and they had a fairly involved discussion about quadratic equations. Yes, even algebra comes into unschooling from time to time.


After much discussion, some of us then played a single round of Balderdash (seven turns) which I suppose could be classed as linguistics, language, and of course creative writing:

Two evenings out

After the busy, and often frustrating early part of the week, the last two evenings we were asked to two very different meals, at two very different homes of some of our local friends.

On Thursday evening, we were asked to Tim and Erika's penthouse apartment. It was rather a last-minute arrangement, since we had been planning to eat at the marina, only to learn in the afternoon that it doesn't so evening meals. So Tim said he'd bake some potatoes in his barbecue, while Erica made a filling, and I made a salad.

They have great views over Larnaka from their balcony area, where we sat out. And while the flats in this photo aren't all that interesting, we spotted the moon, while it was still quite light, just over the top of one of them:


The sun was still out, but Daniel and Becky stood in exactly the right place to shield me from the glare...


We enjoyed the food, and the company, and then I took another photo from a different angle, as the sun started to set. This shows some of the mountains of Cyprus on the horizon:


Here's the view from yet another angle:


Once it was completely dark, Chris - who has a much more expensive, fully adjustable camera - tried to set it to take a photograph of the lights of Larnaka. He had some trouble getting the effect he wanted. I simply switched my camera to 'night view' and got pretty much what he had been aiming for without knowing anything about exposures and so on:


On Friday evening, we went to the bi-weekly inter-church cell group meeting at Jörn and Sheila's home. We haven't done any studies for a while; we eat together and chat, and enjoy each other's company.

Once again there was plenty of good food and interesting conversation. Then, when some folk had left, and we were beginning to think about going, Chris was brave enough to let Lukas try out his expensive camera:


I was somehow persuaded to let Katie use mine, and she took this one of Chris, who looked a little worried, possibly wondering what Lukas was doing with his camera:


Lending Lukas a camera, even for a few minutes, is a good way to become his firm friend:


Then Daniel offered to have a look at their wall-fan, which was rattling rather badly:


He handed the parts to Becky as he dismantled it, and she looked rather long-suffering. 'Oh, Becky's used to it,' Daniel remarked, when I said she didn't look too happy about it. No doubt she is..

No longer disgruntled of Cyprus

Yesterday morning I was feeling decidedly disgruntled. Three things contributed to this. The first was actually very mild indeed, in the scheme of things. I had ordered a book - having had it recommended to me on Amazon UK - which I had, naturally, assumed was the third in a series I had very much enjoyed. It arrived (actually from the Book Depository, which is much better value to Cyprus) a week or two ago. In preparation for reading it, I re-read the first two books. On Sunday, I finally picked up the third in great anticipation... only to discover that it was simply a re-print of the first two in one volume. Nothing new at all.

I know, I know... slightly irritating, but I passed the book to Daniel (who didn't have copies), and other than frowning inwardly when I thought about it, would have been fine. If that had been all.

Monday was a fairly good day, really. I cleaned the main part of the house, did laundry, went to the Froutaria, and prepared food for the evening, plus a big fruit salad. A friend has come out for the week to stay in our guest flat, and spent the day sailing with Richard on his dinghy. In the afternoon I did the accounts for the past week, and then caught up with various blog posts, book reviews and other items that had been on my to-do list for a while.

On Tuesday morning, however, I got up only to discover that the dishwasher hadn't finished. It was making running noises, but the lights were stuck on the final rinse place. I couldn't get it to stop at all, although there was no water inside. It looked as if everything had done a basic wash, but not the last rinse. So I took everything out, rinsed and dried it, and put it away. Not what I wanted, particularly when we have five of us at meals. I told Richard and asked if he'd phone the repairman in the morning.

Laster on Tuesday morning was the last Tots until September, since it closes over the hottest summer months. There were other helpers there, so it wasn't as tiring as it can sometimes be, and I had a ride home. But somehow, Tots is tiring even when I'm not run off my feet.

And at lunch-time, Richard said he hadn't had time to get to the shop where he could speak to the repairman. First thing in the afternoon, he promised that he would... although I was pretty sure they would be closed for siesta-time.

So I washed the lunch-time dishes, which at least weren't too greasy, since we eat cold lunch. I prepared food for the evening, and a dessert, and some ice cream. And kept on washing up, since the dishwasher wasn't working. And then was so tired I didn't get much else done at all in the afternoon. I suppose I read email, and maybe wrote one or two, and caught up with Facebook. I only had a couple of hours before having to finish meal preparation, anyway.

In the evening, Richard said that the shop with the dishwasher repairman had been closed - no surprises there - and he offered to wash the dishes for the evening. So that was good. Then we played a game of Settlers with Chris, who enjoyed it, so that was also good.

Indeed, by Wednesday morning I was pretty much feeling fully gruntled once more. So to speak. I did the usual cleaning of the entire house, changed sheets, did more laundry, popped to the local shops. I made TWO loaves of bread - the first one going in the breadmaker at 6am - since we always have an extra person for lunch on Wednesdays, and I didn't think that one loaf would be enough for six people. I boiled eggs for egg mayonnaise, cleaned out the cat litter, mopped all the stairs... and was still in the shower by 11.30. I then spent just under an hour catching up with email and Facebook, and planned to spend the afternoon doing some writing. Or perhaps working on one of my websites. Richard had phoned the dishwasher repairman who said he would probably be that day - so things were looking up.

Until I sat down at my computer around 3pm or a little later and found Tim on 'Instant Messenger', worried - and angry - about an email he'd received from the student finance people. He applied for next year's funding some months ago. We had expected to fill in forms of parental support and send them in, but were told we could do them online this year since we had the relevant id numbers, and since Tim is a continuing student. So we did that - a couple of months ago - and submitted them.

Several times in the intervening weeks, I've wondered if it worked properly. Tim had an email a couple of weeks after he applied, telling him his application was successful, and saying that his parents now needed to support it. Perhaps we had done it too quickly. So I logged onto the site, which told me i needed to submit the information. There was a 'submit' button, so I hit it - which gave an error message. But when I hit 'continue', it told me I'd send everything that was necessary. All the boxes were ticked, and everything seemed to be fine.

Except that when I logged on again the next day to check, the same thing happened: initial request to submit, followed an error, followed by a page telling me I'd sent all I needed to send.

Tim was going to check that it was all there, but then thought perhaps it would take a week or two, as his initial application did. And so it slipped our minds until Wednesday, when he received an email from the student finance people telling him that he had TWO DAYS to get his parental support forms in!

So I logged on again, and went through the same sequence, again. I tried another browser - exactly the same thing happened. Tim then phoned -at great expense - the 0845 number for student finance; when he finally got through he spoke to a tired-sounding person who simply parroted back that he had to get paper forms to the office by Friday 25th. They said that the online forms weren't working this year, basically.

I am not usually prone to fury, but that really annoyed me. If the online forms weren't working, why did they send emails telling us to fill them in online? And why ON EARTH was there no notice on the student finance website telling parents they needed to submit forms on paper? And why didn't they let Tim - and, presumably, thousands of other students - know a little earlier??

After cooling down slightly, Tim said all he could think of doing was for us to download the pdf forms from a different place, fill them in, scan them and email them to him, so he could then print them and send them by registered mail. Because this year student finance applications are, apparently, centralised...

So I phoned Richard, who was working on King Malu, and he came home. About the same time as the dishwasher repairman, who said we needed a new controller. A hundred euros. Ouch. But as Richard said, a hundred euros isn't THAT bad given that we've had the dishwasher for four years, running probably an average of once per day, without any problems at all. It's just that a hundred euros is quite a bit to find unexpectedly. However, we found it, and they changed the controller.

Meanwhile I was having trouble doing any printing, because - it transpired - my USB hub was no longer working. So Richard re-plugged things, and we printed the forms, and filled them in (I tend to panic when presented with financial forms of any kind) even though I really needed to do more food preparation by that point. The dishwasher had left a lot of mess on the kitchen floor so I had to mop it... and Daniel, thankfully, took charge of the scanning of the pages and sending them to Tim.

Meanwhile, again, Tim had discovered that he'd put on his application that we would be submitting our information online. So he wasn't quite sure whether we COULD now send paper reports. So he phoned again, and spoke to someone else who told him to phone the Birmingham LEA. So he tried, and discovered that they are only open from 2pm-4pm. It was (in the UK) just after 4pm. So he phoned us, and asked Richard if he would phone the student finance office to find out what was going on.

So Richard phoned them, and they said that yes, they had our information. But no, they couldn't tell us whether or not it was complete, because it was Birmingham LEA who dealt with returning students. It's only new ones whose information is centralised... which is the opposite of what Tim had been told.

So Wednesday afternoon was taken up with the student finance fiasco, and I was feeling decidedly irritated. We didn't get to eat until 7.15. But we played another game in the evening, and that was good. We loaded everything into the dishwasher after eating, and set it off. So that was good, too...

..Except that on Thursday morning I got up, and much the same thing had happened. The dishwasher had NOT finished. In fact, this time it looked as if it had barely started. Richard phoned the engineer again, and he said he would come again. So I left the not-very-clean dishes in the dishwasher. And since I was now feeling totally and utterly disgruntled once more, I basically spent the day emailing a good friend. It did help to write everything down, but I was very stressed. We were due to go out in the evening - though I didn't particularly want to - to eat at the Marina. Richard phoned right after lunch to say that the Marina doesn't do evening meals (he just discovered) so his sailing buddy suggested eating at their place - and I was to make a salad.

So that was all right.

The dishwasher man came again, and did some more repairs, and didn't charge anything.

So that was all right, too.

I didn't hear from Tim at all, because he spends Thursdays volunteering in his old school. But he sent an email that arrived this morning, letting me know that while he hadn't yet managed to get in touch with Birmingham LEA, he was very pleased that he's been offered a second choir accompanying job, starting in the Autumn.

This afternoon Tim finally managed to speak to the Birmingham LEA who said that yes, they do need the paper forms. But yes, printed versions are fine, and yes, he can take them to the council house in the city centre. So he's gone there now - and so long as he gets them in before 4pm, everything should be fine.

The only problem now is that Richard woke up with the most dreadful cold...

Merchant of Venice in Kurium

Every year there's a Shakespeare production in the amphitheatre in Kurium, near Limassol. It's usually performed on three nights towards the end of June, or early July. We don't go every year; sometimes we have other commitments; sometimes we don't remember it's happening. Sometimes we aren't particularly interested in the play being performed... and sometimes we decide it's not worth the cost. Tickets are not cheap, although the proceeds do go to a worthy local charity.

The last time we actually went to one of these Shakespeare productions was four years ago, when we went to see 'Midsummer Night's Dream', which had a most impressive set.

We wouldn't have known about this year's until too late, but some friends mentioned that they were going on Friday, to see 'The Merchant of Venice'. It's a play I studied at school for 'O'-level rather more years ago than I care to count; but I remembered it, roughly, and thought it would be fun to see it live. Daniel had already said that he'd like to take Becky to see Kurium at some point, and that he enjoyed the Shakespeare plays. I was a bit put off by the cost - twenty euros each - but we decided to splash out and use some money we'd been given to use 'for ourselves'. Besides, seeing a Shakespeare play at Kurium is a unique Cyprus experience, and Becky is in the country for the first time.

We ate early and left at 6.30pm, armed with some cushions from the guest flat, since the stone amphitheatre steps are not exactly comfortable. Just as well we allowed plenty of time; we thought Richard knew the way, but we took a wrong turning, and then another one, and ended up driving several miles out of our way before finally reaching the Kurium site with about ten minutes to spare. Parking was near the top this time, and we were shown into one of the last parking spaces available.

The set was a simple one, with a white bridge to signify that it was to take place in Venice:


There was a reasonable audience, but not too many people in the side wings of the amphitheatre. Since we could see that parts of the set were on the right, we decided to sit there:


To my surprise, the play started at only a couple of minutes past eight. 'Cyprus time' is usually at least twenty minutes after the given start time - and, indeed, there were quite a few stragglers in the audience.

I was pleased, and a little surprised to find that I remembered a few of the speeches, and most of the plot. The first part of the play is a little dull and somewhat confusing, when several people with long, Italian-sounding names discuss merchandise, and money-lending, and love:


But then came the sub-plot I remembered best, that of Portia whose father had decreed that she must marry whoever chose the correct one of three caskets. Portia has a strong part in the play, and was extremely well acted:


Shylock, the money-lending Jew, was also very well done:


Daniel and I both particularly appreciated the second of the suitors for Portia's hand, the one who chose the silver casket and who spoke with a delightful Cypriot accent. Unfortunately, I only managed a photo of the first suitor, who spoke with a pseudo-French accent:


And of course I had to take one last photo, before it was too dark for cameras (since flash was not permitted) - the successful suitor, who correctly chose the lead casket with the inscription: 'Who chooseth me shall give and hazard all he hath':


The first act was an hour and twenty minutes - as we were told just before the play started. There was then a twenty-minute break which gave us a chance to stand up for a while, and the second act was an hour long. It was 11pm by the time we got away, and 12.30 before I was in bed.

All in all, an enjoyable evening.

Our blender, revisited

Last year, we bought a new blender. An attractive (as blenders go) glass jug, a Moulinex one with an ice crusher. Actually I thought it was last summer that we bought it; it was only in checking my blog that I realised it was as recently as November 2009.

The reason I wanted to know when we bought it is that it started to leak.

Actually, it leaked a tiny bit even when it was fairly new. Just a dribble; enough to be mildly annoying, but not enough to worry about. It worked well, and that's what mattered. I made soups and smoothies, and - more recently - humus and almond milk.

But the leak got worse. I thought perhaps I hadn't screwed the base part into the jug well enough when I removed it for cleaning. Then I noticed that one of the black clips holding it in place had broken. Daniel said that the gasket probably needed replacing, or at least reinforcing. I thought a gasket was a complicated part of a car engine so I was a little surprised to find that it was just a plastic ring.

Since the leaking was getting worse and worse, I thought I'd construct a suitable gasket. It was only when I tried to fit it that I realised another of the black clip things was coming loose. No wonder the base would not stay in place properly, making any liquids leak straight out.

When we realised the blender was only seven months old, we decided to take it back to Orphanides, where we bought it in the electrical department. Thanks to my rough and ready filing techniques (at least I keep everything of this kind) I managed to find the receipt fairly easily. I even found the original box it came in. We showed the saleswoman what the problem was, and she agreed that it was broken. At only seven months old, it was well within the two-year warranty. Richard filled in a pink slip thing, and the woman said she would phone in about ten days. She said it would be mended.

I was a little disappointed as I'd hoped either for a replacement or a refund (enabling us to buy a new one) - but it was only fair to allow them to attempt to mend it first. Not that we thought it could possibly be mended.

So, for a couple of weeks I used the not-so-good blender that works with the food processor.

Two weeks after we'd taken it in, I commented that we hadn't heard anything about the blender. 'Ah!' said Richard, 'I forgot. They phoned a few days ago and said it was ready. About twenty euros...'

Twenty euros? For something under warranty? That seemed a bit excessive. And despite it being a remarkably busy day yesterday (supermarket shop at 9am - NOT at Orphanides but Metro; bring-and-share lunch for 20 at our house to say farewell to some colleagues; other friends invited for an evening meal....) we thought we'd better go and collect the repaired blender at once.

The blender was there. There was a young man in charge this time, who showed us the repair - which in fact was a completely new jug -part. With all three black clips intact. 'Twenty-three euros', he said.

'But it's only seven months old,' Richard protested. 'It should still be under warranty'.

'Ah,' said the young man. 'The warranty covers electrical faults. If you just scratch the jug, that's your fault and not covered.'

'But we didn't scratch it,' Richard told him.

I really don't like protracted discussions of this sort so I wandered off to look at some other things in the shop. Five minutes later, I saw the young man on the phone talking animatedly in Greek. Another five minutes later, and Richard had the blender - and didn't have to pay anything. Evidently it was worth arguing. The young man had told him he couldn't do anything, because it wasn't an electrical problem. So Richard had asked to speak to the managing director. The young man called his supervisor, who apparently said it was fine, and no, we didn't need to pay anything.

It's good to know that consumer rights are upheld in Cyprus, at least sometimes, if one pushes hard enough.

It's also very good to have a fully-functioning blender.

A few busy days

I keep an ongoing online 'to-do' list attached to my gmail account, which includes both the important (such as bill-paying) and the trivial (such as mopping the floor); I can schedule things ahead or list tasks to do each day. I'm not actually very organised, naturally, but keeping a list that pops up every time I open my email is quite constructive. I usually have several things hanging over from previous days - if I don't re-schedule them - and find it oddly satisfying to check things off and then clear them from the lists.

On Thursday night, I actually got to the end of the things I'd planned to do for Thursday and the previous days. I was rather pleased with myself.

On Friday, Richard and I had planned to go by car to the Froutaria - it's only five minutes' walk away, but I wanted a kilo or so of lemons (for lemonade), two or three kilos of apricots (to make jam), a couple of kilos of tomatoes (to chop and freeze), some potatoes and sweet potatoes, apples, oranges... and I know from experience that there are often some irresistible bargains in the 'pink bag' aisle where produce is reduced. No way could I carry all that - and more - home on foot in one trip. Particularly as I would also need to buy two or three kilos of sugar (there are some other groceries available in the froutaria - it's not just fruit and veg). I wanted to make the year's supply of apricot jam as well as a new batch of lemonade and since I had nothing else planned on Friday, thought I would do it then. Apricots are plentiful and have come right down in price, but I don't want to wait any longer since the weather is getting hotter and stickier.

Thursday night, I didn't sleep all that well and for some reason woke about 4.30am. I couldn't get back to sleep so at 5.30 I got up. I had some coffee, and read for a while, then thought about doing my usual early morning mop of steps (inside and out) when I had a strong urge to switch on the computer.

I thought I would probably get distracted but decided I'd read email and Facebook for twenty minutes, and then get on with the mopping.

I found a long email from my friend Sheila who lives around the corner and who was expecting her sixth baby any day. About half way through the email, I did a double-take. She said that she had resumed writing in the middle of the night because her waters had broken... and then the next few sentences were punctuated with contractions at decreasing intervals. Since I was on call, day or night, to look after her three daughters during the birth (which was planned to be at home - unusual but not illegal in Cyprus) I rushed upstairs to take my shower and get dressed, mentioning to a rather sleepy Richard that I might get a phone call any minute.

Sure enough, Sheila phoned. So I walked to their house, collected the girls around the same time as another friend collected the two boys, gave Sheila a hug, and brought the girls back here. They were equipped to stay overnight if necessary, but I didn't think that was very likely since the contractions were about every two minutes by that point....

It was around 7.15am by the time we got back here. I hadn't even had breakfast. For the next three hours I sat on the floor and played lego, printed pictures for Katie (nearly 5) to colour, answered continual questions from her, produced bananas and cereal at random intervals for Helen (21 months) ... and realised that I am actually rather older than I was when I had my own two sons at that age. Sigh. I did remember to put bread ingredients in the breadmaker but nothing else remotely domestic.

At 10am Sheila phoned... and said the baby had arrived nearly two hours earlier! The midwife only got there just in time to catch the baby girl, who did not yet have a name. So we went over to see them :-)


I took some photos for them, and they asked me to stick around for a while... after about half an hour the two little girls were getting increasingly hyper and excited so I suggested I might take them for a walk for an hour or so.


Twenty minutes on the local swings was easy for me, but then we walked to the nearby nature trail which was hard going pushing a buggy... and Helen fell asleep within about five minutes so she couldn't get out and walk. And Katie talked non-stop...

We got back, hot and very thirsty (having forgotten to take water) by about 12.15 and I left half an hour later, so I could get lunch ready. Thankfully Daniel and Becky saw how tired and hot I was, and did that for me.

In the afternoon, we drove to the Froutaria to do the shopping I'd planned for the morning. We bought so much that we had to use a trolley - for the first time since we moved here! - and I was very glad we took the car. When we got home, we chatted for a while to some friends whose daughter was practising on Daniel's drums.

Then we had to go out to choose a gift for a family who are leaving soon, and I wanted to get something for the new baby too (I couldn't get it in advance as we didn't know the gender). The first was relatively easy... but finding a baby gift is not so easy in Larnaka. Richard wanted to do something at the marina so dropped me in the town centre for an hour... and I went into dozens of shops, with no luck. Eventually we met up around 5pm and drove to a bigger shop and managed to find something we liked there.

Dan and Becky cooked us a potato curry in the evening, and even cleared up, which was wonderful. Then we played a board game, and then Richard and I called in to see Sheila and the baby, as she'd texted to see if we could go over... and it was 11pm before I was in bed. Which is late for me.

And for some reason I didn't get to sleep for ages despite being exhausted. And woke at 5.30 on Saturday morning. Surprisingly, although I was tired and a little brain-fogged, I didn't have a headache. Dan and Becky spent the day in Troodos helping to put tents up at the camp-site, and Richard was working on King Malu. So I had the day to myself. Since it's getting warmer, things seem to take longer; I had to pop to the local supermarket for cheese and milk and a few other bits and pieces, and I also made the planned lemonade/cordial/squash since by then we had completely run out. I also made some more almond milk... Richard's trying to go dairy-free.

In the afternoon I made 12 jars of apricot jam, and also sorted out some photos to upload. Then I blanched, skinned, chopped and froze a couple of kilos of tomatoes, and also chopped and froze about 800g mushrooms which had been on special offer at the Froutaria. It doesn't sound like a whole lot, but it took most of the afternoon.

I was asleep by about 10pm and slept until nearly 6am, which is a huge improvement... but I woke with a nasty headache. I decided not to go to church, knowing I had to spend yet more time in the kitchen. At lunch-time we were going to the farewell meal for some friends, and I'd been asked to take a couple of desserts. I'd thought about something baked, but realised I could throw together some store-cupboard cold desserts and not use the oven. We also have our friends (the ones with the new baby...) over tonight for a shared cold meal, so I needed to make bread and desserts for that too.

So I made some jellies and banoffi pies, and the breadmaker made a couple of loaves of bread. I cleared up the kitchen and mopped everywhere since it hadn't been done for a couple of days.

We were out for about two hours at the lunch-time get-together, and enjoyed good food and catching up with various friends - although of course we're sorry to say goodbye to yet another family who are leaving Cyprus. It happens all too often.

And now I'm sitting down for half an hour; I even switched on the air conditioner in the study, as it's quite sticky today. All I need to do now is empty all the bins (since the dustmen come Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in our area) and set the table for eleven.

Perhaps I'll get time to work on my websites or do some writing tomorrow...

Of food and rings and party cakes...

Last Thursday, I wrote about Jacob's birthday evening. I showed a photo of his rather small birthday cake, and mentioned that there was another cake as well.

Here's a picture of that other cake:


You might notice that it's heart shaped. You can probably also make out the letters 'D' and 'B'. That's because although it was Jacob's birthday, he thought it would be rather nice to make a cake in honour of someone else. Or rather, two people.

One of them is my older son Daniel... and I shall direct you temporarily to his blog, where he made an important announcement.

Yes...

It's another milestone in the life of our family. Last Wednesday, Daniel and his girlfriend Becky went with some other people up to Troodos, to turn on water and check the campsite. Over lunch, Daniel - for whom Troodos is one of his favourite places in all the world - proposed to Becky, and she accepted. Just as well, since he had bought her a ring earlier in the week.

They told us in the evening, and spoke to Becky's parents too. The following day they wanted to let various other relatives, close friends and colleagues hear the news before it went viral on Facebook. So I didn't mention it to anyone, although I was smiling so much that I'm surprised nobody guessed.

Not that I saw many people on Thursday morning.

However, Richard did just happen to mention the good news to some friends at the office, one of whom is Jacob's father. And since he didn't say anything about it not being widely announced just yet, the whole family knew - and were thrilled - mid-afternoon. And although it was Jacob's birthday, he was generous enough to want the major cake to be for Daniel and Becky:


After eating, we played a game of Settlers, which Jacob won.


Richard and I wanted to do something to mark the occasion too, and suggested we might take Dan and Becky out for a meal. They're not very decisive, so we thought we might just go to the local meze house - but after much thought, Daniel said he'd like to go to Aztekas. That's a slightly up-market Mexican restaurant along the Dhekelia Road, where we've been to mark other special occasions. It was where we went for a last family meal before Daniel joined the Doulos, four and a half years ago, and where we went in the evening of my birthday, after a wonderful day out in Troodos, a little over two years ago when Daniel was home for his first furlough.


We decided to have one starter between four of us:


Then the food, as ever, was excellent. This is what both Daniel and Becky had: a meat version for Becky, and the veggie version for Dan:


This is what Richard had: his usual (if one can call it 'usual' at a place we visit about once every two years) chimichangas:


Daniel said he was a bit concerned that I was taking photos of so many things rather than simply enjoying life... but that's one of the great benefits of digital cameras.

We decided not to have a dessert at Aztekas; instead we thought we might go to the yogurt ice cream place in Larnaka.

But before we left, as usual, the waiter brought us some margharitas 'on the house':

A birthday party in Cyprus

Probably not a typical Cypriot birthday party. But yesterday, our friend Jacob was 11. He had an outdoor afternoon party for some of his friends around his own age on Wednesday afternoon. Since it mainly involved water balloons, and a great deal of noise and running around, we gracefully (I hope) declined the invitation to attend.

However, we were delighted to be asked to dinner and a game on the evening of his actual birthday. Had the weather been less windy, Richard might have taken Jacob out sailing for an hour, as he did last year, but unfortunately it wasn't possible.

However, when we arrived it was cooler outside than in, so we sat outside for a while and chatted. Daniel and Becky have only met the family two or three times since arriving, but the younger children are not shy... (that's an example of the Great British Understatement):


We had an excellent meal provided by Jacob's father, followed by birthday cake:


(There was another, larger cake too, which I shall write about at some point in the future)

Being a typical home educators' gathering, the dictionary came out during the meal, as various people discussed the difference between a tidal wave and a tsunami. I have no idea what the context was since there were several conversations running concurrently.

We were expecting to play a game of Settlers after the meal. But then Jacob's mother mentioned a maths problem that her oldest daughter had been having trouble with. It involved a cyclist travelling for 7 3/4 hours, at two different speeds, and needing to determine the distance. I was aware that I should easily be able to solve it, but I'm not an evening person and can't easily concentrate on maths when there are several other people around. So I didn't even attempt to solve it; I resolved to think about it the following day.

However, for some reason the problem caught the minds of all present. Becky borrowed a notebook from Daniel, and started seeing if she could figure it out:


Then Jacob, who's pretty good at maths, wondered if he could solve the problem:


Richard, who doesn't even like maths, also got intrigued... so he pulled out his phone, which does just about everything other than make coffee, jotted down notes, came up with formulae, and started to work on it too... watched by Katie and Lukas:


Sheila looked at Jacob's notes, and explained that he wasn't on quite the right track:


Daniel and Jacob got into a discussion about averages, which weren't really relevant to the problem:


Even Katie started doing some writing....


However, nobody got to the solution. And time was getting on. Jacob really wanted to play a game of Settlers - he and Marie were staying up late specially. So, reluctantly, everyone put away their notebooks and calculators, and we set up the game.

Then, when others were discussing who would play on which team, Helen - who will probably be the youngest Catan player ever - thought she might help me placing my initial settlements:

(And if anyone is remotely interested in the details of the game, you can find it here on my Settlers of Catan blog. Suffice it to say that Jacob won, which was a very good end to his birthday).

Lots of games in the past few days

Daniel mentioned yesterday that some of his Asian friends were surprised at how often Europeans and Australians play board games. I suppose even some Europeans and Australians might be a little startled at how often we have played games in the last few days. But it's summer... and we're still very much enjoying having Daniel and Becky staying. They both enjoy games, so it's good to spend an evening - or even an afternoon - with a board game to focus on. None of us is particularly competitive but games give an interesting challenge and are often the start of good conversations.

On Saturday, Richard was spending the day working on King Malu. Daniel and Becky said they'd like to learn to play 'Ticket to Ride', so after lunch we got it out. I explained as we went through, and they both enjoyed the game. I don't even remember who won, but think probably it was Daniel. Here's Becky part-way through the game, where the trains are nicely distributed around the board.


And here's Daniel:


Then I had a text message from a friend, asking if her oldest daughter could come over to play a game of Settlers. Daniel went to spend a bit of time with Richard at the boat, but Becky said she was always up for a game... so we agreed.

I wrote about the surprisingly fast Settlers game we played on my other blog; here's Marie at the end of the game:


.. and since it was over so very rapidly, we decided to play a game of Ticket to Ride. Marie was the winner by a LONG way.


So that was three games on Saturday.

On Sunday evening, we had a family game of Settlers, with the variation called 'Seafarers of Catan'. Daniel won a closely-fought match:


Last night, Richard had to do yet more work on King Malu. So the rest of us decided to have another game of Ticket to Ride, which Becky won:


(And yes, if anyone actually notices such a detail, some of the stations were placed on the game afterwards, incorrectly, to make it look more interesting)

It's quite a quick game with three people, so afterwards we decided to play a basic game of Carcassonne, which neither Daniel nor Becky had played for many months. Becky won that too. And after we'd done all the scoring, and removed all the little player dudes, we looked at the board which had far more 'holes' than Richard likes... if he'd been there he would probably have filled some of them in just to make it look better, even if had had not benefited.


So then we had the idea of filling in the holes anyway, to make it look more interesting. Of course, everything had to match correctly on all sides, and we agreed not to move any of the starting river. I moved a few pieces a little half-heartedly, but Daniel has an excellent eye for this kind of thing, and it was probably only about five or six minutes before we had this tidy square:


Unfortunately there were two pieces left over. There were 102 in all and we'd made a 10x10 square. We did debate trying to re-create a Carcassonne 17x6 rectangle... but decided we liked the tidiness of the perfect square.

But then we discussed how many completed cities would be scored if there were a lying-down dude (officially called a farmer in Carcassone) somewhere in the middle of the board. And when we realised there were some places he couldn't access, Daniel moved a few more tiles around, and within a couple of minutes made a board where almost every city could be accessed via just one giant 'field'.

And then, for good measure, we added carrying handles on the side, to so speak...


Richard arrived home at that point, and while we did wonder if he'd think we'd actually played the game to finish that way, he did realise at once that we'd rather manipulated the board...

We didn't want to put it away at first. But then Daniel decided to be even more creative...