i want a buppydoggggg!! (nicosia street festival)

two days later, i decide i really don't want to wait much longer to get a puppy.  benjamin & i look into what it would take to transport one into england and the states from cyprus if we were to get one, and figure out the logistics regarding when the quarantining is necessary and how to fly with the puppy and so forth.  we decide that it would definitely be doable, and i start looking online to find a shih tzu, because that's pretty much the only breed i want.  


i grew up in a house with a shih tzu, scooter, who we had for 17 years until he passed away last spring.  scooter was absolutely amazing... one of the best things that's ever happened to my family.  my sister recently got a shih tzu, who is equally as amazing, and i feel like i am just way too attached to the breed to get a different kind.


as i'm searching for various pet adopt agencies and shelters, i find out that one group will be at a street festival in downtown nicosia in an hour or so and try to convince benjamin that it's a great idea to go.  i won... as usual :)


we get there, and find this festival to be pretty awesome!  apparently, it's an annual christmas street festival, and the streets are all lit up and lined with vendors giving free samples of coffee, hot cocoa, liquor, food, chocolate covered marshmallows... you name it.

we start navigating our way through the crowd, searching for the puppy booth.  meanwhile, we pass a christmas tree that is totally right up my alley, covered with shopping bags!!

a bit further up the street, and a man in stilts literally almost knocks me over after he sends a little boy in his stroller through his legs.

we find the puppy section, and are a little disappointed by the lack of selection in the puppies they brought with them.  to top it off, most of the pups looked really run down, dirty, and almost sickly.  this was definitely not what i had in mind, and as much as i love the idea of rescuing the little guys, i can't stand the thought of winding up with a big mess of a medical veterinary bill.  after playing a bit with an ADORABLE baby german shepherd (which obviously didn't fit our under-20-pound restriction for the plane), we head back to the center of the festival and benjamin enjoys a nice marshmallow coated in chocolate fondue from the fountain at the breast cancer awareness tent.

at the end of the street, we notice a group of men in uniform with instruments.  apparently, nicosia is under the impression that they can somehow try to copy the macy's thanksgiving day parade or something, because these guys started marching down the street playing carols followed by dancing girls with umbrellas as props.  competing with new york city??? i dont thiiiiink so!  in any case, it was worth a laugh :)

at the end of the day, we didn't leave with a pup... but it was definitely an experience that i wouldn't have wanted to miss out on.


i knew getting a puppy would make our life better!  we didn't even get him yet and he's already leading us to fun exciting things to do!!


xox k

benjamin's brilliant idea

on a beautiful thursday, mister benjamin proposed that we walk to the discount store, where we get some of our grocery staples for less than they charge at the big supermarket.  the store is about a 5 minute drive, so i figured it'd be about a 45 minute walk and it was really sunny and bright out, so i obliged.  we decided it would be a nice way to get in a little fresh air activity plus pick up a couple things we needed from the shop.


we set off walking and are having a good time chatting with each other and picking up on the details of the surroundings that you miss when passing by at 40 kph.  we cut through an adorable little neighborhood with ivy covered houses and fruit tree lined yards, and wonder why his basketball team thought it would be better to put us in a new build rather than a quant little cultural place like these.  it reminded me of the scene in under the tuscan sun when you see the adorable home she stays in and you just get that feel of what it must be like to really live there.  i can't really describe how different this block felt from ours, despite the fact that we had hardly walked a mile to get there.


we get about halfway to the store and kyle, our roommate, drives up.  he's headed away from our apartment, yells out the window that he made a wrong turn headed home, makes a left, and keeps driving.  benjamin & i look at each other like "ummm shouldn't he be turning around?"  he was home when we got back, and we never asked how he managed to get there.


a little further up the road as we're passing the bakery, eboni drives up.  she's headed to the discount store, too, and asks if we want a ride.  we're about halfway there, and enjoying our trip, so we tell her we'll see her when we get there and she carries on her way.  at this point, i'm thinking to myself, how cool is it that we're in a foreign country, thousands of miles from home, and as we walk to the store we're stopped by not one, but two of our friends passing by?  it was like we'd been living here for years and people recognized us passing on the street and stopped to see what was going on... except not.


anyway, about 20 minutes later, we get to the store and eboni is just finishing up her trip.  apparently our way of doing things wasn't necessarily the time-saver way, but we were enjoying our afternoon so it was fine.  we grab the groceries we need: some juice, cereal, soy milk, wine, eggs, chicken... what be it, and head to check out.  the cashier rings us up, we pay, and we go to put the groceries in...... the........ car..... that we dont have.  apparently the two of us are such dip-shits that we never stopped to ponder the fact that once we got to the store, we would then have to trek the 45 minutes back to the house with whatever groceries we acquired.  i was super motivated about lugging this shit back to the house, let me tell you.  


fast forward about 25 minutes and we get back to the intersection with the bakery.  now benboy wants to stop for bread and pitas.... ummmm are you kidding?  k babe, you can add those bags to your load, then.


we get the bread and are back on our way past the various neighborhoods, the trees, the church, etc.  things just aren't quite as beautiful and enjoyable when your arms are permanently marked with the lines from grocery bags weighing down on the skin of your elbows and your fingers are numb and red from the handles of the ones you've been carrying over your shoulder like santa's big red toy bag.  


we get back to the apartment and ben apologizes for his idiotic suggestion of an afternoon passtime.  my answer?  "no booboo, that was fun.. i'd definitely do that again!" 


please don't make me eat my words...


xox k

a tuesday

tuesday was... a tuesday.  nothing really out of the ordinary to report, just a nice, lazy day with my boyfriend.

we ran some errands in the morning, and then came back for a bit of r & r.  as if my entire life isn't r & r... ;)

we sat down together and enjoyed a nice lunch, caught up with our families for a bit, and then as the sun began to set in the late afternoon, we snuggled up on the bed with a nice sigh of content.

and there we were, lying in the dimmed light together.  george winston "december" was playing softly, reminding me of home.  church bells were ringing in the distance, the faint sound of a child crying was echoing from the next apartment, and the ticking of the clocks were signaling each second gone by, coaxing us to sleep.  in that moment, life was absolutely perfect.

...and it still is.

xox k

decorations

sorry i haven't written in awhile but, frankly, i just haven't felt like it.  in any case, carrying on:


the next day, we headed to the store to pick up some christmas tree ornaments.  i wanted our tree to make us feel christmassy and put us in the holiday spirit, but we weren't intending on spending tons of money on something that will just wind up in the dumpster when we leave.. or right after the holidays, for that matter.


we ended up finding some cheap, but cute, ornaments that are basically just glittered styrofoam spheres with  the "ornament" attachment at the top.  after lunch, we decided to go ahead and decorate, and started to put them up.  in years passed, when decorating with my parents, a trend emerged where we would notice that a good lot of the ornaments wound up at the top of tree, where mister benjamin must have found comfort decorating at his own height.


a few ornaments in, i guess benjamin became lazy, because he decided to just have a seat on the couch next to the tree and decorate from there.  i suppose not much has changed since the days of the tree-top-decorating, because by the time he was done, all of his ornaments were on the left side of the tree.  i felt like my mom as i went back through the decorations later, moving them to more acceptable branches in spots where decor was lacking.  


after checking out the tree and deciding we could really use a few more decorations, i turned to the pine cone collection sitting in the closet from our first trip to the park.  by pulling out some ribbon from my craft drawer and tying it to the tops of the pine cones, i created about a dozen more ornaments that we added to the tree.  our final masterpiece was hardly anything to be ashamed of!

i moved a few more ornaments from the left after this photo was taken... funny how you wind up taking after some of the most laughed at traits of your parents, don't you think??


xox k

christmas tree!

growing up, my parents always took my sister & i to a tree farm about an hour's drive from our house, where hundreds of acres of land are covered with thousands of various pine trees... blue spruce, douglas fir, fraser fir, white pine... you name it.  basically, you park at their "home base," collect a tag with your name written on it to mark your tree with once you find it, and then either start off on foot or catch one of their tractor-drawn trailers to the different fields, segmented based on the type of tree you're looking for.


after hours of trying to find the perfect tree and bickering over the angles and bare spots and shape and so forth, we would always manage to find one (or two) that we agreed on, tag it, and cut it down.  the tractor guys come back around and pick it up to bring it back down the hill, where they drill the hole for the stand and put it in the baling machine to wrap it up in twine.  they even put it in the van or on top of the car for you while you're inside drinking hot cocoa and eating cookies.


fast forward back to the present... and on friday, i saw an advertisement for a sale on artificial christmas trees at the super home store (it's really not that super... just saying).  on saturday, i mentioned to ben that i thought it'd be a really nice thing for us to get so we can still feel a part of the holiday season while we're both away from our families.  don't get me wrong, benjamin is my family too, but i've never been away from home for the season before.


we make the trip down to the store and check out these "trees" (i've never had a fake tree before).  the ones that i deemed acceptable were about 130-200 euros... so $180-300 basically.  not gona happen.  the cheapest one was 20 and not so cute, and thaaaat's the one we bought.  i'm not cheap, but can't really justify spending tons of money on something we're going to throw away in a month.  we proceeded to find lights, and then were out the door.


we get home, and i set up the tree... paying much more attention to it, i'm sure, than the guys who put up the ones in the shop.

by the time i was done, it actually looked like a christmas tree!


....almost.


xox k

it's a feast!

thanksgiving morning, i woke up at 9:30 to get back to work.  mister benjamin had morning and evening practices like usual, and i figured it would be a good opportunity for me to maximize my time by doing a bulk of the work while i was home alone.  turns out it was also convenient when i needed him to stop at the store again on his way home! ;)


went to town slicing the bread for the bruschetta - was going to finish it later so the bread wouldn't get soggy or stale or anything.  moved on to prepping the celery for the stuffed celery, pending ben being able to find spanish olives in the store. otherwise, i'd use this celery for the stuffing and wouldn't need him to get the extra that i'd asked him to pick up.  can you see my thoughts at work?  emailed momma mac with a few more questions about the dinner, namely what to warm up first and what could wait until further along in the process.


that was when i found out that i'd messed up.  apparently she doesn't pre-cook everything, she pre-prepares it, then cooks it the day of.  my heart dropped when she sent that.  big time.  the last thing i wanted was for everything to wind up dried out and overcooked when it was time for dinner.  i was convinced that i'd ruined my first thanksgiving.  with her help, we sort of trouble-shot the situation, and i was feeling positive again.  she even said, "lots of times, the leftovers are better than the first time," and that's pretty much what mine were going to wind up being: a whole ton of untouched leftovers!  momma mac always makes things better.


by then, ben got home with the things i needed, and we were on to finishing the stuffing.  he wanted to help, so i told him he could cut up a bowls-worth of onions and another of celery for the stuffing.  this turned into a project, though, because i then had to show him the easiest way of quickly cutting onions, then explain the easiest way to dice up celery, etc.  it would have probably been easier to bang it out myself, but the whole cooking-with-my-boyfriend thing was way too good to pass up, especially when he was so eager to help!  there we were, sleeves rolled up in the kitchen, preparing our first thanksgiving meal: it couldn't have been more perfect.


by about 3, everything was set & ready to go, with the exception of being warm.  i put the dishes on the table, and wondered to myself where the food that eboni was bringing was going to fit.

the boys left for their evening practice, and i got dressed and started getting out silverware, etc.  


when he got back, he told me that "the team is coming." umm.... all of them?


sent benjamin to the store AGAIN for paper plates, cups, and so forth, since we had nowhere near enough to feed an entire team on!  he was back just before people started coming, and it worked out just fine.


in the end, there were 12 of us... hardly the entire team, but all of the americans were there and it made me happy to be able to provide a thanksgiving meal and evening at least for the ones who would have typically celebrated it if they were home.  it was breaking my heart to think of people sitting alone in their apartments on thanksgiving.  did i mention it's my mom's favorite holiday?  this is what she would have - and has - done, too, so it made it even better to put it into practice for our first thanksgiving.


eboni & kevin showed up with tons more food, and we had to scramble big time to fit everything on counters and in places where people could easily access it.  we were running around like crazy trying to get things warmed up in our tiny single oven (i now fully understand the importance of double ovens) .. by the time we pulled out the final few dishes from the oven, the ones we'd put in first were back to room-temperature.  there was really no way we were going to win, so we wound up telling people they'd probably have to microwave their plates.  it is what it is, right?


towards the end of the night, i excused myself to skype back home to the family and friends that were at my parents house, and spent a bit catching up with people from there that i haven't seen in ages.  while i was chatting, our guests in the other room (mister benjamin was with them.. i didn't just abandon them!) decided that it was time to head out.  i'm pretty sure we ran out of alcohol, and that if we hadn't, they probably would have kept the party going.  


went back into the kitchen to tidy up, and realized that all 12 people hadn't managed to eat even half of the food we had made!  ended the night enjoying the company of my amazing boyfriend and a wonderful feeling of contentment after having successfully pulled off our first thanksgiving dinner!


leftovers for a week?  yes, please!!


xox k

thanksgiving shenanigans

i had told benjamin that i wanted to wake up very early on wednesday morning to head out for the thanksgiving dinner groceries in order to be back in the kitchen cooking by about noon.  


mind you, i had asked him on monday to let his team know that we were planning on doing thanksgiving and to try to find out how many people wanted to come join us, namely the americans, since i totally thought they should all have a place to celebrate the holiday!  fast forward to wednesday, and i still had no idea if i was cooking for 6 or 20.  i guess being italian, it wasn't a huge deal, since i was going to cook for an army regardless of how many people decided to come enjoy it with us.


on my part of the menu was stuffed celery, stuffed mushrooms, bruschetta, my grandma's stuffing, mom's delmonico potatoes and swiss string beans, and baked stuffed chicken with a ricotta, parmesan, mushroom, and spinach stuffing.  eboni had another entire feast planned to bring, as well.  we did the groceries, came in way under budget for what we expected (yay) and headed home so i could get a move on.


first things first meant that i needed to open a bottle of wine.  not sure how things get done in most homes, but in ours, it's with significant amounts of alcohol consumption ;)  my christmas music was on blast, the oven was heating, the stove was fired up, and my glass was full... time to get busy!


i must have emailed my mom 20 times that day with questions about the recipes and how to do things best, what to substitute for things i couldn't find, and so forth.  i also must have sent ben to the store about 3 more times after we got back from our initial shop.  woops!  at the end of the day, though, i felt great about what i'd done.


i went to sleep that night having already made the potatoes, string beans, mushrooms, and chicken, and then used the extra stuffing to make fried patties with a little bit of spicy thai sauce mixed in - kinda like a crab cake minus the crab.  that left the bruschetta, celery, bread stuffing, and gravy for thanksgiving day. 


no problemo, right?


xox k

girls day out

monday, eboni & i decided it was time for a little shopping extravaganza.  she & irie picked me up around 5 and we headed to strovolos to the mall of cyprus to have a look around for some more wintery type clothes.  both of us did really sucky jobs packing and weren't very prepared for the fact that there is, actually, a winter season here (barely).  basically, what it means is that during the nights, it gets chilly, and during the day you can't quite get away with shorts and t-shirts anymore.  who knew.

i had packed way more sun dresses, shorts, and tank tops than i had sweaters and long sleeve shirts, so naturally the only logical answer for the predicament was to go buy things! 

the mall of cyprus is great.  it's only two stories, and there aren't tons of stores in it, but the ones that are there are fun, stylish, clothing stores, mainly for women.  jackpot.  we're wandering around the shops and i'm thinking how i could literally wear just about everything i'm seeing.  i've found that clothes shopping in europe is so much more fun than it is in the states.  the stores are filled with amazing styles and it's so easy to get caught up in the fact that these are things that nobody back home will have and wind up buying everything you see.  i had made a mental note not to do this, but it took some serious strength.

as we walk in, we pass a little sweets stand and eboni stops to grab some baklava, because i told her she had to try it.  if you haven't, do it.  such an amazing greek pastry, with honey and pecans and amazingness.  honestly, don't pass it up.

we get to shopping.  eboni gets irie the most adorable little beanie hat in the first store we go into, with the ears that come down lower and have strings that either dangle or tie under the chin - so freaking cute!  we're wandering into various stores, picking up a few things here & there, and being girls.  before we know it, we're being kicked out of a store because the mall closed.  woops!

i get home and mister benjamin's not back from practice yet.  bummer, cuz i really can't wait to show him what he bought! ;) 

xox k

a go with the flow kinda day

sunday was amazing.  benjamin had the day off, and we slept in pretty late.  when we woke up, we looked outside and it was gorgeous (it had been cloudy the day before). because it was already about noon and we hadn't even showered or had breakfast, we ruled out any big extravaganzas.

without any plan in mind, we hop in the car & head out for a coffee.  we order our coffee "for here," and go find a seat.  coffee shops in europe are much more restaurant-like than they are in the states.  there are tons of outdoor seating areas with couches and coffee tables around, some in the shade, some in the sun.  if you order your coffee "for here," you are served with big mugs just like you'd snuggle up with at home, and when you're done, you leave your dishes on the table and the waitress comes to clear them for you after you've gone.

we must have been sitting there for an hour, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the briskness of the chilled breeze; much longer than it took us to finish our drinks.  the two of us were so baffled, though, as for what to do next!  it was a gorgeous day, but there wasn't enough time to do any real exploring, and we had just been to old nicosia yesterday.  

we wind up heading down there again for another wander, regardless of the fact that we've done this a million times now.  i'm livid with myself for not bringing passports with us so we could have a wander around the turkish side, as i'd promised myself i would not forget them the next time we headed that way (in my defense, we didn't know that was the plan).  

we start off on a stroll through old nicosia, and decide to explore the streets less traveled, if you will.  what began as a right turn where we normally would have continued straight or turned around led us into all kinds of desolate back street areas where people live high above the street in old buildings very much in need of renovation, or at least a paint job.  it was like time stopped somewhere between 1960-1970 and kind of was just at a stand still.  it was both beautiful and devastating at the same time, and i couldn't decide if i would love to live there or hate it.  one building would be adorable and quaint and show so much character, and then the next would be missing the windows and tagged with graffiti.  so bizarre!

after a bit, we head home because i have to start cooking something to take over to eboni & kevin's for dinner.  they had invited us all over, kyle too, which ended up being a really great night out of the house.  we got there for about 7 and left after midnight, following dinner, chatting, and card games that turned into drinking games that turned into lots of laughs.

it was a lovely end to a great, completely unplanned day, and i wouldn't hesitate to do it all over again!

xox k

on the border

on saturday, we decide to take kyle into old nicosia to show him a bit of what this place is all about.  we parked in "our" lot, and headed across the street into the quaint little area we are so beginning to love.

after wandering down the main strip a bit, we continued past the part where we've typically turned around. things changed in style from the clothing shops and restaurants we had come from to more of a souvenir shop type feel.

i looked across the street and saw a "police station" tucked into the corner of this tiny little nook in the cobblestone streets.  it was such an unlikely place for a police station, not to mention it seemed kind of pointless - like what are they going to do in an emergency?  i decided i had to take a picture.  i pull out my camera, and just as i'm about to lift it to focus for the picture, i look literally 5 meters in front of me and realize we're standing at the greek/turkish border.  guess the police station makes more sense than i thought.  if i had taken the picture, i probably would have been in big time trouble.

i explain the border to kyle, how it's the last divided city in the world, and that the two sides despise each other.  at first, i was under the impression that only E.U. passport holders could cross the border, but i'm now reading things that insinuate that i might be able to as well.  at one point in time, the hatred was so intense between the two sides that if you were, at any point in time, on the turkish side & had the stamp in your passport, you were no longer allowed back to the greek side.  ever.  to this day, they do "passport" stamps on separate pieces of paper, rather than in the passport itself.  i wish we had our passports so we could have tried to cross the border!!

...next time.

xox k

groceries & basketball

friday morning i head over to eboni at about 10:30 to trek out for some groceries.  she goes to a different grocery store than ben & i had been, and said that they had a lot more "american" options and selections, and i was really excited about some normal mustard (the stuff we had was terrible).  irie stays with kevin, and eboni & i hop in the car and are on our way.


i guess there's not really too much excitement that i can write about regarding grocery shopping, but it was definitely a nice switch to not have my 5-year-old in tow.  ben's hilarious when we're shopping.  he's the kind of guy that thinks if we have three apple juices in the fridge we're low, and comes to put three more in the cart.  i say no, ben, we have three at home, and he replies, "oh okay, so just two then?"  you catch my drift.  it's also torture trying to explain why we don't need five cadbury chocolate bars, four nestle crunches and a bag of sugar coated gummy things.  i literally have him saving his change now, and he can count up his pennies and buy candy bars when he gets enough.  seriously.


we grab some groceries, grab some coffee, and head home.  i'm really excited because i bought a roast pan & a casserole dish to add to the massive collection of two pans that they gave us in our "furnished" kitchen, and i can't wait to cook something fun.


eb drops me back off and mister benjamin comes down to help lug the stuff up the stairs (i'm afraid of elevators).  the plan is that eboni will come back around 6:30 ish to pick me up for the game.  she drives... i'm too scared.  cars here are on the wrong side of the road, the driver sits on the wrong side of the car, it's just a mess.  so basically she has driving duty.  it's probably better that way, too, because i wouldn't want the responsibility of irie's life while i was trying to figure out what side of the street oncoming traffic is coming from.


benboy & i relax for a bit, have a quick bit of food, and then he's off to the gym to get ready for the game.  eboni comes a bit later, and we head that way, too.  i asked irie where we're going and she gets all excited, "baball!"  eboni says, "who are we going to watch?"  i'm expecting "da da" but instead, we get "ogo, nen (ben), jb, da da..." i told you she knows everyones names!  seriously this kid is a child protegy.  she's not even two yet!!


the game starts off well, but it's not long before i'm not paying as much attention to it as i am to miss irie.

 seriously, tell me she's not precious!!!  eboni too.... ;)

i forget the rest of the game, really, but they won and then we went out to dinner on the committee at a yummy place that i have no idea the name of.  whenever we've been taken out with the team, food has just continuously piled onto the table in massive quantities.  i think they must pre-order what they want served and just say not to stop bringing it until they tell them to.  that being said, i got a little nervous the first time because i'm such a picky eater (i don't eat animal products) and i didn't want to offend anyone by not really indulging in the foods they were so proudly offering us.


what i've found, though, is people are very, very accommodating to other people when it has to do with food.  remember when i said they do what they want and don't care?  i was kind of exaggerating anyway, but it definitely doesn't apply to eating.  one of the guys on the committee picked up on the way i eat the first time we went out, by noticing what i was choosing from the table, and then it was game over.  he ordered up another feast for me that was completely vegan-friendly, and it was unbelievable.  this time when we were out, he again came up to me, "you're vegetarian, yes?" and then had the owner of the restaurant (i think) come by to tell me what they could make up for me.  it's been amazing! 


i am slowly starting to stray from my vegan diet, though.  i've found that there are so many traditionally greek and cypriot dishes here that i really feel i should try in order to completely throw myself into their culture.  i think that a lot of the reasons that i began the journey with the vegan diet were very much revolved around the american meat & dairy industry, and don't necessarily apply as strongly in other countries.  i do still very much believe in the reasons why i began the vegan diet, and i'm not completely giving up on it, i'm just working on finding a balance, i think, between being true to what i feel and believe about the animals, as well as what i believe about learning other cultures and traditions.  that being said, i still have zero intentions of eating meat.  after seven years, i think it would take a lot more than a change in culture to get me to change my mind on that one.


speaking of food, eboni and i decided over our wine the other night that we are going to put on a big thanksgiving meal for pretty much anyone on the team that wants to come.  i'm excited.  kind of strange to think that this will be my first self-prepared thanksgiving dinner, rather than being home with my parents!


guess we're growing up...


xox k

a whole lot of rain... and wine

so apparently as much as it "never" rains here, when it does, it really does.  from the time kyle got here on sunday morning until pretty much friday, the skies were gray and it was raining on & off.  rain, for me, has always made for a lazy, relaxing, do-nothing type of day... and this entire week was pretty much just that.  


every morning i would wake up, look outside from the bedroom & decide that the day was forfeited to the rain.. i mean come on, how much fun can exploring be when you're soaking wet, cold, and cranky?  it'd be one thing if we were staying local, but to really adventure out means long car rides, and i wasn't motivated by sitting on the ride back soaked to the bone like a wet dog.


finally, come thursday, i'd had enough of sitting cooped up inside (as was my choice) and decided to see what eboni was up to while the boys were at practice.  turned out her & irie were just sitting at their apartment hanging out, and so i grabbed a bottle of wine & headed out for the two minute journey walking to their house.


"nim! nim!"  irie's excited to see me, but can't quite grasp the "k" at the start of my name... which i love.  ben's more of a "enn" too.  irie isn't even two yet, but knows all of our names and can put them to our faces.  she's literally better than i am at the names of the guys on the team (maybe not quite but i'll give her that one).


anyway, first things first was to pour a couple glasses of wine, followed by about five house tours given by irie.  "momma dadda room, irie room, momma dadda room, irie room.  oooh noooo!! wa wa! oooooh noooo!! ooooh noooo!!!"  i guess eboni had mopped the floors earlier, and irie was telling me that the floors were wet so be careful (wa wa is water).  i'm sure they had been dry for a few hours by now, but hey... can't be mad at the girl for trying to keep me safe!  she's way too smart for her age, i swear.


we sit & enjoy a bottle of wine and an adorable little girl, and before we realize it, kevin's home from practice.  i was like, "you're home early!"  wrong.  evidently, hours had gone by & we didn't even realize it.  


ben calls from downstairs to tell me he's here, (i had asked him to pick me up there on his way home), but there's still a good bit of wine in my glass, and i'm not about to waste it.  he & kyle come upstairs for a bit while i finish, and we introduce kyle to irie.  a few minutes later we head out because it's way past dinner time and everyone was pretty hungry by then. eboni & i decide to hook up the following morning for a grocery shopping & coffee date before the fourth basketball game.


we leave, and i feel great to a) have gotten out of the house and b) have someone other than ben to have meaningful conversation with.  it's actually amazing to have someone that i get along with so well here too, especially since she's done the same leave work behind, go abroad with a basketball player, enjoy life thing too.  some of the conversations we had that night will be with me forever, i just know it... and i love that.


note to self:  do this every night while the boys practice.


xox k

new roommate

sunday morning, we thought we were going to be able to sleep in because ben didn't have practice until later on in the day.  you can see where i'm headed here: we thought wrong.  at 9am, we got a call from his assistant coach, darren, saying that he was bringing us a new roommate.  booo!


milos, the roommate we started off the season with, was sent home about a week prior because he had been injured and the committee wasn't pleased with his performance or something stupid like that.  he immediately signed onto a different team, and had 17 pts and like 8 rebounds in his first game... their loss! 


anyway, darren gets here at like 9:30 with kyle, who made me very relieved.  you can imagine i wasn't a very happy camper when i found out we were getting someone new, but kyle is very easy to get along with and is from a culture very similar to ours, so we're kind of getting on more like roommates than different people living in the same apartment.  hard to explain, really, but i think it was difficult with milos being serbian.  he is a great guy, don't get me wrong, but with the language barrier (his english is WAY better than my serbian, but still not perfect) and the difference in typical routines and stuff, it was just tricky i guess.


kyle is from canada and went to school in the states at long island u, which is really close to where i'm from.  his dad is english, so he and ben also have that in common.


over the last week that he's been here, i think we've gotten to know quite a bit about each other and the way we kind of function/things we've been through, etc, and it's wound up being kinda nice switch up having someone else to chat with rather than just the two of us.


i suppose i'll learn to deal with it.... ;)


xox k

a nice, local day

friday was a gorgeous laid-back day for the two of us.  yes, we had gone to pick up ben's keyboard, but apart from that, we just stayed close by.

remember that amazing gyro i had from the spot across the street that i mentioned we hadn't been back to?  we went back.  and remember the park that i loved across the street that we hadn't returned to?  we went there, too.  as a matter of fact, we got the gyros from thomas' snacks, and then we went to eat them on a bench in the park.  it was great!

we came back to the apartment afterwards, because there were an overabundance of flies and i was beginning to be very very tired of getting eaten alive.  on the balcony off the kitchen, we put two of the chairs from the kitchen table, and that really ugly podium column thingy that i said was really really heinous in those photos of the apartment way back when... remember that?  it was the one that i said i'd really enjoy throwing off the balcony.  well, we decided to not throw it off the balcony, but rather use it on the balcony.

anyway, we figure it's still a beautiful afternoon, and we make a coffee and sit out there enjoying the sun and chatting.  when the sun goes behind a cloud, i decide it's way too cold to be sitting outside, as i often tend to do, and we head back indoors.  i'm pretty much a baby like that.

sometimes a nice uneventful day really pans out to be lovely, don't you think??

xox k

85th anniversary for apoel

wednesday night, we were told we had to go to a dinner for the 85th anniversary of apoel (the club ben plays for).  in reality, we weren't very excited about it - except for the free food - but decided to make the best of it.

we get there, and the place where they're throwing the party is beautiful... i'm excited now! ;)  i really have no idea what they were saying when they came over the system to speak about the club and stuff, because it was in greek, but the food was amazing, and we had a nice night out socializing with the other players on the team and their families.  we sat with kevin, eboni, and irie, and another guy on the team named ogo.  

after eboni & i had ordered our second glasses of wine, ogo decides he's going to try it.  just to preface, ogo isn't a drinker.  moreover, ogo is definitely not a wine drinker.  he goes to get a glass of wine.... this is after his first sip.

he was like, "it's a terrible taste, but... i want more."  decided he was going to finish the glass.  i'm not sure whether or not he did, since by then, i moved on to playing with my new best friend, irie.  not sure what was up with the face-making, because she loves cameras and seeing herself on the screen once it's been taken.  second thought, maybe that's why the silly face.

this one was taken after we'd been bouncing around, dancing, jumping up and down, and flying through the air.  it was a really late night since the dinner began at 9, and she was just about to fall asleep in my lap.

beennjaminnnn???  i want onnneeee!! 

xox k

the hunt for a music store

monday & tuesday wind up being completely taken over by ben's hunt for a music store.  he's decided he needs a new keyboard, and once he makes his mind up about something, it needs to be done.  now.  in all fairness, i'm exactly the same way, so i guess i can't really complain.

monday, he googles music shops & comes up with what he thinks it the right route to get to a few to check out.  he take the picture on his ipod, and we're on our way.  little did we know that we would be spending the day driving in circles, wandering aimlessly with zero resolution.  we've already established that this is not one of my favorite things to do, so naturally, i was just enthralled.  we get home that day without finding a single music shop.

you can imagine my excitement, then, when we wake up the next day & he wants to go try again.  he takes another picture on his ipod, and draws out a little bit of a map on paper for us to navigate.  this time we do find a couple shops, but neither of them have any of the type of equipment he wants, they're just for instruments like guitars and drums rather than the fancy shmancy midi-controller a-b s-d 2249 my-keyboard-is-better-than-your-keyboard thingy that he wants.  one of the shops he found online is a dj store, and it sounds a bit more promising.

we can't find it.  again.  i say to ben, i think we've gone too far on this street and we were supposed to be back there (pointing back across the main street to the opposite side) but he just makes a right turn and carries on driving without purpose through streets that we've already established aren't the right ones.  eventually, he comes up with this great idea to go back over the main street to have a look at what's on the other side.  sound familiar?  yea, my thoughts exactly.

we go back, find the place, and i try to not say "i told you so."  this is a very difficult thing to abstain from once you've spent some time with mister benjamin, you see.  

anyway, we go in, the guy looks up the fancy shmancy midi-controller a-b-c-d-23526 super cool keyboard, and tells ben he can order it for him.  he decides to have a think about it & call the guy the next day if he wants to place the order.  very mature decision, if you ask me.

wednesday, rather than calling, though, he wants to go in.  this is now the third day, in a row, that i've been in the car on a hunt for music stuff.  i'm overjoyed.  i guess it's the price i pay for all the amazing things he does for me. (that was my sappy love-bird bit.. it doesn't happen very often).  we order the keyboard, and he says it will probably be in by friday.

it is, in fact, in on friday, and we go back again to pick it up & pay for it.  just to clarify, we've now spent 4 days out of 5 in a week, sorting out the keyboard.  

he better freaking play the thing.

xox k

aphrodite's rock, paphos

sunday the 6th is another day off, and we decide to hook up with kevin, eboni, & irie for a bit of an adventure.  i had read about aphrodite's rock, and the pictures on google images looked absolutely breathtaking.  i knew it was a longer drive than the majority of the trips we'd been taking, but i figured it'd be worth it if we got to spend the majority of the day down that way.  i think it was about an hour and a half to aphrodite's rock, and another half to paphos from there.  we get in touch with the crew in the morning, and decide we'll set off at 12:30.

we decide to take separate cars in case irie gets sleepy or something & they need to leave early, and we set off.  about an hour into the trip or so, there's an exit for a scenic route i read about online, and we decide to head that way.  granted this way was probably much lengthier, but it wound up being gorgeous.  we pulled off the street a few times for photo opps, but mostly trekked our way through rolling hills, in and out of the view of the gorgeous mediterranean coast.

we've been traveling on this scenic road for quite awhile, and i start to get nervous that i've navigated wrong.  normally, i wouldn't care, but i feel like with the others in their separate car behind us, i really want to get it right.  just as i start to get really anxious about it, we pull into another lay-by to check out the view, and we realize we've found it!!

i had never heard the story of aphrodite until i became interested in checking out this part of the beautiful cyprus coast, so for those of you who, like me, haven't heard it, here's the short version.

greek mythology has it that aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty. apparently, she was born at this very place when she emerged from the sea foam a fully grown woman and was escorted to shore on a shell.  the story says that if you swim, nude, around her rock (the middle of the three in the photo above), you will remain young & fertile for eternity.

we hung out at this vantage point for a bit, enjoying the scenery before deciding to head down the hill to check it out.

everything about this place was just gorgeous!  i loved the way the sun shone above the rock as we came down the hill to the beach.

from up above, i was almost disappointed in the prominence of the rocks... i had anticipated them being huge and really pronounced along the shore, and they were beautiful, but they weren't.  when we got closer, i finally got my "wow" moment.  look how small those two people walking in front of the rock look!  every bone in my body wanted to climb it, but the sign on the side that said not to wound up getting the best of me.

the view of the beach with the rocks behind us, looking towards paphos.  the beach was amazing, filled with beautiful beach stones that ben decided to collect.  he filled his pockets with huge rocks to the point where i thought his shorts were going to fall down.  i still have no idea how they stayed up... there were seriously a lot of rocks in there ...rocks that are now sitting on our bedroom floor collecting dust.  personally, i chose a few smaller rocks with the idea that maybe they'd make nice pendants (which they are proving to do quite well), and i found a piece of sea glass!  it's the first and only piece i've found since being in cyprus.  again, what a lovely pendant it has made.

eventually, irie has had enough of throwing the rocks into the water (i'm pretty sure this was one of my favorite things to do when i was little, too) ... actually, it is still one of ben's favorites, which is probably another reason why he & irie get along so well!  we decide to head out and make the remaining half our trip to paphos to see what that's all about.

we get there just in time for the sun to begin to set, and it's absolutely beautiful. this coastal area of paphos is soo picturesque.. i'm really not sure why i decided to not take out my camera as we were driving through, (since i'm a firm believer that one can never have too many photos), but for some reason i didn't.  these were taken along the sea-walk, as we were heading to find a place to eat.

we stumble across a cute restaurant with a large open-air area (where i took the picture above from, actually), and decide to eat there.  the menu looks amazing, and believe me, it was.  all of the food i've had since i've been here has been outstanding.  i'm beginning to feel extremely lucky that there isn't a scale in our apartment!!

another beautiful day with great company... what more can a girl ask for?

xox k