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

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

eat

my favorite thing to do is eat.  if you've known me for more than an hour, this is something you've already figured out.  part three of the move, learn, eat series is .. well .. eat.


i think you'll find this video a bit less inspirational than the first two - if you take it at face value.  if you really sit and think into it, though, it tells an amazing story.  i feel that a culture's cuisine tells a lot about their people, customs, and the climate... it tells the part of the story that words can't.


food also has an amazing way of making you feel home.  i could be almost anywhere in the world enjoying a great meal, and somehow i feel home.  i can sense myself sitting in my kitchen with the oven on, the stove on, mixing bowls and cutting boards covering every countertop, momma mac cooking up an 8 course meal for the 26 people that have come by for the night, and i can sense the way this is the same in almost any part of the world.


cuisine really is such a paramount part of society.  we celebrate with it, we mourn with it, we gather for it, we talk about it; everything we do has some connection to eating, or at least it does for me.  in most cultures, eating is so much more than what you do to stay alive (i say most because i'm very aware that there are a handful that do just eat to live... i feel bad for them).



EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.


an unbelievable documentary of food around the globe.  overall, it made me jealous.  and hungry.


xox k

learn

this video is part two of what is probably the most inspirational series of short films i've seen in my life.  it just goes to show that the world is so fascinatingly diverse, with each culture shining in a completely different light, eager to bring you into its story.


the first segment made me want to see the world; this one makes me want to know the world.  it completely blows my mind what's out there to explore.



LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.


tell me that doesn't make you want to dive headfirst into a foreign lifestyle, or even something that's just foreign to you, and soak up everything it has to offer??  


my challenge to you today: think of something you've never done before.  do it.


xox k

move

taking a break today from what i've been traditionally writing because i feel like this series of short films completely sum up my ultimate goal in life.  so unbelievably motivated by what these three guys were able to achieve.  


the director writes, "3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage... all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ....into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films..... = a trip of a lifetime."  this is the first of their three videos...


my two first thoughts were, "wow!" and "yes, please!"



MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.


my following thoughts were a bit more insightful, i think.  i honestly hope you're as moved by this first video as i am... makes me feel so small & so incredibly inspired!  the world is a beautiful place, & i want to see it!!


parts two and three, learn and eat, coming soon!


xox k

troodos mountains

turns out the team decided to have practice on saturday, but they were doing it at 11:30 "to get it out of the way"... aka to ruin the day.  ben gets home around 2:30 and we decide to still try to make do with what we've got, and are going to try to trek up into the troodos mountains to hunt down the caledonia waterfalls. one of the times that i googled "things to do in cyprus" (which i tend to do on a fairly regular basis), the falls came up & the photos looked absolutely breathtaking.  don't know about most people, but i'm a big fan of pretty places.. i decide it's a must-do.


anyway, we hop in the car with a faint idea of where to go (the google directions were deemed easy enough to copy on my hand rather than take a picture of), and are off to make a quick stop in nicosia - i really can't remember what it was for, to be honest with you - and then to be on our way.  after we stop, we're back on the road, and have decided to just follow road signs for troodos since we're not in the right starting point for the directions.


we get a ways down, and are off the motor way and onto smaller roads.  we get to a spot with a pull-off from the road and a map of the roads through the mountains and stop for a look.  ben & i are looking at the map, i can't really remember exactly the name of the area that the waterfalls are in, but i know it isn't kykkos (where there is a gorgeous monastery), and i'm pretty sure it starts with a p.  pygros?  pygros.  we go with that, set a route starting with a right turn at the fork in the road, and are back on the way.  all that i really know about where this waterfall is is the name of a hotel that it's very close to, "edelweiss," and the name of the street where we can find the hotel.  talk about good planning....  


we're off twisting and turning through the mountains, climbing crazy steep hills and traipsing through small towns and "built-up" areas of the mountains.  each corner we turn unveils yet another stunning view of rolling hills, villages, churches, and skyline.

it's amazing what they've been able to build on these crazy steep hills!  there are even pubs with their adverts painted onto the stone walls... wall that were built so you don't fall off the sides of the streets (in some places, they don't even have these!! eeeek!)

and if that wasn't good enough, they even have GAS STATIONS!  on the side of the mountain!  how the trucks get up there to refill the fuel is absolutely beyond me, as there were areas of the streets that our tiny itty bitty car could hardly even make it through.  not to mention that people here still park like idiots on the sides of the streets like they do in all the other parts of the island, not caring about those who might need to get through...  or sideswipe their car.  

we continue on up the hills, and are reaching the highest point just before the sun begins to set.  we literally took the road all the way to the very top of the highest hill of the troodos.  at the top was an area fenced in by barbed wire that i imagine has some sort of military function.

we were under the impression that there was a some kind of vantage point at the top where you could have a look around your views, but there's not.  what we had been seeing from the distance was not an observation tower, but rather a massive golf ball. 

k, fine... i'm sure it has some real purpose, like holding water or something, but tell me it's not a giant golf ball, right?!?

we keep driving.  the sun is beginning to go down & we've still not found my waterfall.  we're starting to make a decent on the other side of the mountain range, and our views are spectacular.  

we continue on and it isn't long before the sun starts to set.  even the very beginning of the sunset is astonishingly gorgeous.

we finally find the edelweiss hotel, nestled into this tiny little village, and i'm really proud of us for figuring it out.  

we go inside to the front desk to find out how we find the waterfalls, and the guy there tells us that it's about to be dark and the path is 2 kilometers long and is not lit.  plus, we wouldn't be able to see the waterfall really even if we made it through the path.  we figure he's probably right and decide to come back another day to see the waterfall.  regardless of how excited i was to see it & the fact that it was really the reason we came on this expedition in the first place, we have really done a lot of sight seeing already and we're happy with our afternoon, so it's not too heartbreaking.  later, when we got home, i looked up how much it would cost to spend the night in the quaint little edelweiss hotel.... 22 euros. 

somewhere along the line, we passed road signs leading back to lefkosia (the ones we follow for home) and decide that it's probably the faster route back, rather than backtracking the winds and twists and turns that we took to get up there.  just as we're back on our way, we pass a clearing in the trees where we can see the sunset clearly.  i have never in my life seen a more gorgeous sunset than the one that night.

we follow the signs back down the mountain and to a two lane main road that will take us where we need to be.  it's not long before i recognize where we are:  we've come out back at that map where we stopped earlier.... but from the other side of the fork in the road.  had we gone left, we would have been there in no time!  no regrets, though, as the sights we saw that day were priceless.  next time we're intent on seeing the caledonia falls, though, we know juuuust where to go!

famous last words, right?

xox k

ayia napa take II

thursday, saturday, and sunday are all supposed to be days off because they had so many games so quickly in a row, and we decide we're going to make the best of each one.  on thursday, we kind of had our hearts set on heading down to the beach, despite the fact that the weather report was pretty dreary (meaning there might be some clouds in the sky).  ben being from england means that clouds aren't a reason to stay away from the beach, and me being absolutely obsessed with beaches means, well, that i like to go pretty much rain or shine.  or hail, or sleet, or blizzard.  you get the point.


we head down to ayia napa and off in the distance we see some blue sky.  fingers crossed, right?  ben's convinced that it will turn into a beautiful day, but such is typical of his ever-optimistic personality.  


as we get close, i remember that the last time we went, we stayed on the motor way for too long, so i suggest we get off at the next exit.  it turned out to be one exit too soon, which wasn't a big deal, and in the meantime, we pass this quaint little church sitting on a hill with a beautiful view of the sea.

across the street is this house that i ask ben to buy for me.  he laughed.. i wasn't kidding.

we get down to the shore and decide to make an attempt at checking out a different part of town than we did last time.  we take a side street down to the beach a little quicker off the main drag than we had when we went before, and wind up in a beautiful little cove area.

at first, it was really cloudy, but we weren't about to let it ruin our day.  the sun shining through the clouds was absolutely beautiful, and the rock pools along the water proved to be very entertaining for my child of a boyfriend.  


as we're walking, i look down hoping that maybe this will be the beach that i finally find some shells on, and i see one!!  a closer look, and i realize that there are thousands of tiny little shells mixed in with pebbles lining the shore.  that's pretty much a wrap, because i could have spent hours on end sifting through the pebbles in search of the little guys.  ben is crouched down, too, helping for awhile and then goes back to throwing rocks into the water or whatever other pastime a toddler would be intrigued by.  by the time i stop, i have hundreds. guess i shouldn't be the one to talk!

after a bit, it winds up that ben was right, and the sky begins to clear.  the entire cove turns a breathtaking color of aqua blue that these photos wont even begin to depict.  it was crazy, because it was like from every angle you looked, the sea took on a different color.  i haven't done a single thing to enhance the colors.

we decide it's time to move on, and head back to the car to move it somewhere where we wont have to worry about it being towed (we left it at the end of the street in front of a tree when we came through to this spot).  we wind up deciding it's easiest to put it where we did the last time we were here and then have a wander around again.

on the way to park the car, we pass a chinese/japanese restaurant that looks quite trendy and decide that's where we'll eat when the time comes.  in all honesty, it's only about 4pm but i'm becoming pretty hungry.  shocker.  the sun is beginning to make its decent in the sky, and i am getting really excited for another gorgeous coastal sunset.

once we park the car, we figure we might as well just do an early dinner, and set off walking the mile or so back to the restaurant.  as we walk by a little path down to the water, i catch a glimpse of the sun beginning to set, and think that we should head down it just to catch the sunset before we continue on to dinner.  we start down the path, and three adorable street cats come out to play, two of them tiny little kittens!  i seriously fell in love with these little guys, especially this one, who i named ashe.

we stop to play for a bit, dangling ben's key lanyard for them to paw at, scratching their backs, cuddling with them, and then continue down the path... and they follow!  we're literally headed along with three cats pouncing after us trying to keep up.  one runs ahead and pauses for us to catch up and then continues like that all the way down the path.  it was so freaking cute!

we get down to the end of the path just as the good part of the sunset is starting and keep playing with our new friends while we enjoy the scenery.  just as the beautiful colors were at their peak, the kittens decided to sit and watch along with us.

really, how cute is that??

once i decide i'm over it, we head back up the path, kitties in tow, and say goodbye when we reach the street so we can go eat.  we finish our walk to the restaurant, are seated, and enjoy another fabulous meal together before heading back home to nicosia.  in reality, it didn't wind up to be such an early dinner after all.

beautiful scenery, beautiful food, beautiful company.  i have nothing to complain about these days!

xox k

an oven & a game

don't think i mentioned this, but when i got here, benjamin told me that the oven was broken.  apparently, the light would go on inside it but it wouldn't get hot no matter how long you left it on for.  i'm a huge fan of cooking, and really enjoy stuffed peppers, mushrooms, apples, etc, that are made in the oven.  because mister benjamin is not typically a moron, i took his word that it was broken.  

we had been on top of the assistant coach, who handles arrangements like these, to make sure that the fixer upper guy came to look at the oven and get it working again.  evidently, the team paid the guy at the beginning of the season for all of the minor things he would have to do to maintain the players' apartments, which, in my opinion, was the the wrong way to go about it.  add to that the fact that everything here takes at least 2 weeks to get done from the time when you start really nagging, which we hadn't begun to do yet.  it got to the point where ben finally told the coach that if the guy didn't come over in the next week, he was going to go see him personally and tell him to come fix it.  he was here four days later.  sometimes ya just gotta take matters into your own hands.

anyway, the doorbell rings and the guy is here to have a look at the ac unit in the living room, which hasn't been working properly, or at all, for that matter, and the oven.  he fiddles with the ac for a bit & decides that it's not something he can fix and he'll have to call the company themselves to come check into it.  he then goes to the oven, and turns it on.  let me repeat: he goes to the oven, and turns it on.  benjamin, in all his glory, didn't turn the oven on the right way and concluded that it was broken.  we have been living, at this point, for three weeks without an oven that i was under the impression was not working.  amazing.  

i decide to skip the part where i explain to ben how to work an oven, because i can't believe that at 24 he still couldn't figure out how.  i'm being a bit of a prick here, really.... the reason he didn't get it to turn on right is because there's a safety feature built into the timer dial on the oven so that you have to put the timer to a certain setting in order for the temperature dial to activate and heat the oven.

i start going to town making stuffed peppers for dinner that night, deciding that since he has a game, we will be able to come home & just pop them in the oven for dinner!  soooo excited, you have no idea.  plus, we've been eating stove-cooked meals for so long now, that i think anything out of the oven would have been phenomenal! 

time comes around to head for the game, and we do.  i sit with my favorite new friends, well, my only new friends really (they'd be my favorite anyway), eboni & irie.  i spend most of the game obsessing over how freaking adorable she is.  seriously tell me you don't want to put this little one in your pocket!!

benboy has a great game... lots of minutes, points, rebounds, blocks, blah blah blah... all that basketball jazz.  to top it off, they win.  i'm a really really happy camper when it's all over, as is he.

we go home, pop dinner in the oven and enjoy a very yummy meal, if i do say so myself.  it's been yet another amazing afternoon & evening with my boo!

xox k