From last night…and I quote…
Well, it has been a good run, avoiding this thing I call my blog. However, it has been forced upon me. You see…in the lovely world of professional VB…you get, well – surprised (ALL THE TIME). Like tonight, I was mid-Panini-making delightfulness…when- WHAMO… NO freaking power. I went to check the circuit breaker because we had a major issue with it when we first moved in, but it was fine. I am pretty confident that the power was cut because the bill wasn’t paid. My logic behind this…we haven’t seen a pay check in two months! Now this is a regular occurrence in the euro pro vb season, scratch that... euro pro sports. Our bball team didn’t even finish the season because the player when on strike. We could have gone on strike over a month ago, but in good faith continued to play. However, with this latest development, things could be changing. We will have to see…
Anyway, sitting here at the wonderfully candlelit table, I feel it is time to stop avoiding this ever dreadful blog and get to it. So here goes… (and fair warning I am about to completely plagiarize the first part of this from miss Berkley’s blog, so for you avid berks blog readers… hang in there)
Easter in Cyprus is a huge holiday. The Cypriots spend almost 5 days celebrating the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus so we decided to see what it was all about and celebrated the holiday with our manager's family. On Thursday night, our manager's wife, Theresa, picked us up and we went to church with them at St. Lazarus's Church. We have walked by the church many a time, but have not been inside until Thursday…which reminded me of the love of the Ring Church in Germany. (for those of you that don’t know this, we passed it a few times a day and every time my roomie Erica was like I Love this church and want to go in it before we leaver). Anyway, St. Lazarus was built during the medieval times and was stunning inside. At church we saw Jesus being crucified, he was put up on a cross and the priest walked all around the church. The church was packed, there were no seats in sight, so we stood on top of the stairs and tried to see from afar. I was holding onto the side of the wall and peering around the corner. We arrived late at the service but apparently that is commonplace as the church service is very long. We got there around 8 and the service was to go until midnight. We didn't stay very long because we couldn't understand anything as they were talking in ancient Greek. Even the kids didn’t understand, because they don’t learn ancient Greek in school anymore. (rock on English) Anyways, it was very cool to see and go to a church in a different country.
The next night, Jess came into town, and we went to check out church again for Good Friday. Theresa picked us up again and we went to St. Lazarus' Church. However, this time there was no chance of getting inside. There were people just packed outside of the church preparing for Jesus' funeral. We waited outside until the military band came out, the "girl scouts" marched by, the high priests, city mayor, and finally Jesus covered in flowers proceeded throughout the entire downtown of Larnaca. The processional goes around the city and stops by other churches who join in and have a ceremony in the middle of the city. After watching the processional at the church, we walked to Theresa's aunt's house to wait for the processional to come by again so we could get a much better look at it. At the house, we had all sorts of food and drinks, and chatted with the family. Finally, the processional came by and it was really cool to see. It was somewhat emotional for some because it was like you were seeing a real funeral procession. Not so much for others like Amanda who said, “I LOVE PARADES” like we were at the 4th of July in Wisconsin and they were going to be through candy out to us in the crowd. After the procession went by, the priests gave Theresa's mother holy water so she put it on our hands and we put it on our faces. So now we are all holy I guess?? The next day, the church takes down all of the black cloth (that is put up all around the church) and there is a huge celebration. Church service basically runs the full day until 1 in the morning. Throughout the whole night there were pipe bombs and fireworks going off. We decided not to take part in this part of the Easter because we went to the beach instead.
On Saturday, we all went to the beach in Agia Napa. We ran into Morgan, her fiancé Matt and their friend Luke (they are the other Americans playing on the island). It was a gorgeous day and we were able to get a ton of sun, play some beach volleyball, and jump off of a 2 story boat. There was this party boat that came close to the beach so we decided to swim out to the boat to see if we could jump off of it too. It took about 20 minutes just to get there and had Morgan not be so set on doing this, I might not have had the strength to swim out, but we followed our fearless leader out and all we did was hop on the boat, go to the second story, and then jumped off. After we jumped off, we swam back to shore. After spending all day at the beach we headed to cape Greco to show Jess some amazing views of the island. (All the pics can be seen from the link on the side of the page that goes to my shutterfly). We got to cape Greco just into to see the sun set. It was fantastic! Afterwards we met back up with everyone at the Mexican restaurant where there were sombreros, ponchos, guns, and bulls. Naturally this all means that we needed to do a photoshot wearing a sombreros and ponchos, holding guns, while riding bulls. After going bull riding, we headed back home to prepare for Easter Sunday and the lamb roast.
On Easter Sunday, we went to Theresa's mother's house for lots of Cypriot food. There was a full lamb roasting, along with pork kebabs, and other crazy meats. There were also some bird heads and meat that were on a table and our manager, Xenios, just took a head, beak and all, and put it in his mouth and ate it. The bird heads were from those normal little birds that you see flying all the time. It was just crazy and I was not about to try and eat a beak. Aside from little bird heads, there was a ton of food to try including lamb, potatoes, pasta salad, and other meats that I wasn't quite sure of what it was. After stuffing our faces with Cypriot food, we talked with most everyone, had desserts, and played with the kids. I played DJ hero with our manager’s son, while Jess and Amanda learned a new game from Aleksandra and Andreas that they had a blast with. It was called pikachu and it was basically like rock paper scissors, except if you lost, you got slapped in the face. I am glad I played DJ Hero… no face slapping involved.
I was super sad to say goodbye to Krista as they left for Greece, where they are now building a hut on the beach to live. No for real they did that! I can’t wait to get updates from her. Jess has since left for DC, and Amanda is now in Athens. We have our last practice tonight and last match tomorrow. We will finish 4th in the league, which was the team’s goal. We lost in 4 Tuesday to Anorthosis, Morgan’s team…the natty champs. We lost the 3rd and 4th set by only two points, so it was a good match at least. After the match on Friday Triin will leave for Estonia…Berks will get back from Athens and it is 2 weeks of beach and sun and relaxation before heading home to the craziness I call summer.
Sheila and I have another good camp season set up. (Sports Up) Must say- I am very proud to be a small business owner. Although taxes were a pain in the- you know what. Then it will be time to start gearing up for the OHS season (OHS VB) Crazy how fast it all has gone! Anyway, time to go play some cards at our romantic candlelit kitchen with Triin and Josh!
Yasas!
