Everyone here is much more fashionable than I am, and I didn't pack a lot of clothes, but everything I DID pack was wrong. Everyone wears skinny jeans and high-heeled boots, which I don't even OWN, let alone bring with me, and I look like a homeless person, although I've been here for several weeks and have yet to see a homeless person in Cyprus. Luckily my roommates are determined that I shall NOT remain a fashion-trainwreck, and one of the Cypriot girls in my class has made it her mission to teach me Greek, so by the time I come home, I will be as foreign as any alien. I'm going to have worse culture shock going HOME than I did when I came.
My style is comfy jeans and non-flattering clothes and scrubby looking hoodies, so I am covered pretty much all the time from neck to wrists and ankles, feeling rather prudish. About the only time that any skin between my neck and toes is showing is when I'm either sleeping or showering. Recently our bathroom light went out, and we discovered we needed a new lightbulb, so we bought one, even checking the watts first... and it still didn't work. So instead of trying again, we've just let the bathroom stay in the dark. ...which makes it very awkward and creepy to shower, because you're in the dark, showering, and the door is open with everyone just chilling in the other room. Not the sort of thing I'm used to.
Also in weird things I'm not used to, I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but we've got drag racers that race along the street directly in front of my apartment (in fact, directly beneath my balcony). They start racing around 11 at night and keep going (VERY loudly) until about 4am... EVERY NIGHT. So far we've heard a few blowouts, but no crashes and no one's been hit, although we expect at least one of those two to happen. I'm more liable to get hit by one of these drag racers than I am to get into any other sort of trouble here in Cyprus.
And lastly, in addition to the expected greek graffiti, anarchy symbols, "f&@% the police," and strangely enough an advertisement for Smirnoff Ice, we found these gems:
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Since I seem to be having luck posting pictures tonight, before that runs out, I figured I'd show you where I live, at least a little bit. When I get more pictures of the place and the city (now that I have a new camera!) I'll post those too! I got the site running again! I tried to write a post yesterday, and couldn't get to it. Magically it reappeared today, which is good, because my "fix-it" skills are limited to 1) complain loudly 2) stomp around and hit random keys and 3) magic, so if it won't magically fix, I'm kind of at a loss. They say that those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it. Well, what about people like me who DID learn it but hang out with people who assume I'm just being silly because they'd have "cleared it all up by now"? So yesterday a bunch of us decided to go for a walk in a national park here in the city. However, after seeing some monstrous killer demon fish and some oddly deformed and gargantuan duck-aliens in the pond, we ran out of things to stare at like tourists. So, being the brilliant people that we are in a country that was invaded in a civil war of sorts only 30 years ago, we crossed a main road, meandered through what was a perfect movie-set minefield, and then debated where to go from there. Like in any good movie, for the action (or horror, whatever) to start, the group must split up, so we did. The hardest part was finding the room. Seriously, this semester is going to be the easiest one I've ever had. It's been a wild couple of days. A couple of girls I hadn't met yet went with me to search out different spots around town, and we were supposed to meet up with the rest of the kids in our program at some restaurant. Sounds good, right? So last night a whole bunch of us went out to a sports bar at 7 to watch the presidential inauguration. We were nearly the only ones there (usually the bars don't even open until 11 for the sports bars and 1am for some of the better clubs) but we made a lot of noise. There was much cheering for Obama, and much booing for Rick Warren, and the bartender sent us all a round of shots to celebrate, and then one of the kids announced that he had brought a ridiculous amount of American flags in his luggage, and later hung a full-sized one in one of our apartments. At midnight one of the girls on our trip turned 21, so basically, much celebrating... for some people, TOO much celebrating. So we went out last night, got a taxi downtown, went out to a sushi bar (yes, again, we sort of missed out on the whole Cyprus thing) and then went barhopping. I DID have local beer, which was actually really good, I'd recommend it if you're ever in the area. |
AuthorSenior Classics major at University of New Hampshire. Archives
February 2009
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