Busy week here in Cyprus. We hosted our first dinner party and it was great fun. The local expat friends we have met in our village make a great fit socially and plenty of chuckles were had all night long. Later in the week we were invited back to Margeret and Jed’s for another fine evening of food, wine and merriment.
The Weather here has been bizarre for us anyway. In all of our time here, we have had less than 2 hours of overcast, and about 30 seconds of light sprinkles at around 1 AM once! Daytime highs have been around 26 all month and we both went for a swim again today. I leave for work in a few days so Laurel will have to brief me on the first flooding rain of the season – should it happen.
My bike arrived on Tuesday and I had a grand time all week riding it about. The highlight was a late afternoon cruise with Laurel up the winding village roads to a mountain village 22Km NE called Dora. The scenery was fantastic although the paved goat trail was a bit of a distraction to say the least. It is definitely challenging riding and requires a patient and slow approach to the many corners. The bike, a 1992 CB400sf Honda “Super four” is a quiet smooth and nice handling bike for the short freeway runs to Paphos as well as the twisting side roads and occasional dirt trails. I will get some photos out soon.
The next big event as you can see is our tour of the Mosaics in the Town of Paphos. The Roman site included an Odeon as well as a giant estate with many Roman baths, Banquet rooms and Temple halls. The excavation work has still much to discover but what has been exposed is terrific. The construction of Stonework and rooms that were once lined with marble mark a time when this area was truly of considerable size and wealth. We have now two books on Paphos and for those of you planning to see us, we suggest that you either get a copy of some at the library or start digging through the internet as the more history you can read before you see it, the more you appreciate what in fact you are seeing. For us, it has whetted our appetite and truly raises our respect for all of mankind that has passed this earth before us.
Today we took a little side trip into the country and rolled down a steep loose trail to explore a truly rural church. The small chapel is located literally out in the middle of nowhere and the door was held shut with a shoelace. We don’t know its age or its history but it seems to be used by about four or five people as there were plenty of candles and seating for less than a Camper van. It had lovely icons of different saints hidden under a dust cover on an easel and the alter was assembled with flat stones with a roman pillar ‘capital’ as its base. An old brass church bell the size of a football hung outside and Laurel cautioned me not to ring it as I was so tempted. Saturday evening at 5 PM and not a soul within miles, but who knows??? Oh ya, God.
Tomorrow is church once more and as we cycle between our original Anglican service in a medieval sanctuary, and the evangelistic service at a tourist Hotel, we are torn as both have great folks and offer lovely worship – it just isn’t Comox United Church! So we press on gaining spiritual strength and forming warm friendships as we go.
Finally, we hope that our home phone might be connected in the next week so that we may once again get online more often.
Love Dale and Laurel
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