Today was a long day. We all still have some serious jet lag, even though I actually fell asleep fairly early last night (like midnight ish). For some reason I have a consistent fever and headache, but I am guessing it is part of adjusting to the food/climate/new environment. We had a full day of orientation sort of stuff starting at 9am and everything just got over. The info sessions were all at the univeristy, so it was great to get to see the place finally. From the few rooms we saw and the outside, it looks like a pretty nice school. But there are cats and dogs everywhere. Right outside the school's doors was an ADORABLE puppy, it looked like a mix of a golden/collie but a mini dog. It looked just like a dog on the sad SPCA commercials. Anyway, the presentations were long, but really helpful. They also told us tons of stories from past study abroad groups as examples of what NOT to do. For summed-up example, in Italy a drunk student on the program stole a dump truck and got beat up by garbage men. And another was that 2 girls in Paris were hungry at 10pm & a car with guys drove up & basically told them they were sandwich makers, so the girls went with them (we could all guess were this story goes)..they drove them to the woods (in Paris somewhere); luckily the girls jumped out of the car in the woods ad outran the men. Regardless, there were tons of stories similar to these with the conclusion being "Don't be an idiot."

We had a break for a couple hours and then all went out to this great buffet restaraunt. The place was really nice and had a great atmosphere. Our group took up literally half the place and we had so much fun. It is intereting to see that people's personalities are showing already and groups of "types" of personalities/interests have already formed. I have met so many great girls that I can totally see being good friends with. Anyway, the food was deliscious, even though most of it I had no idea what I was eating. The desserts in particular were deliscious. One thing I've noticed with Cypriot cuisine is that everything is so fresh and healthy.

Spent the day touring Nicosia, we had so much fun! Heading over to a friends right now, but will add details later.

Touring Old City for the First Time

I forgot to mention what it was like getting landing in Cyprus. First of all, on the plane, anyone who looked 20-ish, spoke English, and looked American-ish we started talking to because they ended up being on the same program. Everyone else speaks Greek or Turkish and looks something like a compination of Greece/Edpyt/Middle Eastern heritgae. Customs was a breeze and baggage claim was smooth too (although some girl got stuck at London airport, and many lost their luggage in transit). Walking out of the aiport, dragging our heavy loads (I brought 150lbs worth of stuff-and so did just about everyone else), we could smell a sweet/salty sea smell in the breeze. It was fairly humid and the breeze was welcomed. We all loaded onto a bus and then it started to downpour for a few minutes. On our way to our apartments (about a 45 minute drive), we passed mountains, palm trees, cacti, citrus trees, castles on hills, Greek Orthodox churches, sandy/brushy hills, and stunning homes. We were exhuasted though, so I didn't take any pictures of the drive. Also, we were on the left side of the road which is weird and the roads are so narrow! There are cats running around everywhere, and our street has an odor of cat pee (disgusting really, especially after it rains). Anyway, back to today.

Not the best pic, but it was freezing out! All the stores are so fancy and trendy, even though the streets are pretty dirty. Considering there are like tons of people in this city, there were few people out on the streets and most of the stores closed super early for a Friday night!

After walking around looking for a place to eat, we found a place that looked similar to a Joe's NY Pizza-except everything was in Greek! We all got chicken Gyros (pronounced Geerows) with a cucumber yogurt sauce, parsley, and sandwich veggies-which were really yummy!

Everyone here seems so nice! Even though no one speaks English, we find a way to communicate which is really cool. Everyone holds doors open for each other, gives up their seats/makes room at tables, and are very accommodating and patient with our non-Greek speaking selves.

Thank God this woman spoke English because the entire menu was in Greek and had no pictures!

I officially understand what jet lag is. It is midnight here and 5pm back home. Last night I didn't fall asleep until 5am and woke up at 2pm! So did my roommate and Mark. Our apartment is really nice, but very European. For one, it is extremely energy efficient-all the lights in the halls/stairs stay on for about 3 minutes when activated, the heating/cooling system is..confusing, to take a shower with warm water we have to turn on a heat-button for 30 minutes (and in summer it is solar hot water), every single building has solar panels, and the toilets are very strange (you can't put even toilet paper in them! So gross!).

This is our living room/dinning room. compared to a lot of the other rooms we've seen, it is pretty nice. The apartment is so sunny and lovely during the day, but chilly at night.

This is our kitchen, it is small but pretty nice. Our washing machine is in our kitchen and is teeny tiny and we have no dryer and no oven. We went grocery shopping today at a mega-super store-similar to Walmart except everything is really expensive, orgnaic/european, and all in GREEK! Since we don't have cars or anything we can only buy as much as we can carry. Considering that we had to completely stock our apartment with all the essentials-we took several trips. Luckily, the super store is literally 30 seconds away because I have a feeling we will be going there a lot!

Our bathroom will defintiely take some getting use to! Between the toilet that we cannot put toilet paper in, the low lighting, the bugs, and the shower it is definitely the most..interesting part of our apartment. The shower curtain doesn't do much and so the floor gets covered in water every time we shower no matter what we do. Anyway, that's the bathroom.

This is our view from the veranda. It is mostly of other apartments, but great for people watching! To the right, you can sort of see the Troodos Mountains-unfortunately our veranda is filthy and smells like cat pee, so I will let you know if we can see the mts once we clean out there.

This is the view from our kitchen.

From our bedroom, we can see this pretty cityline. It looks kind of like what I picture Arizona to look like and is really gorgeous!

I will post a picture of our bedroom later, right now we are still unpacking in there.

London Airport was HUGE! After no sleep on the plane ride, it was exhausting wandering trying to find where our terminal was.

Flying from London to Larnaca (Cyprus) we passed over a stunning mountain range.