Today we woke up and headed to the University of Nicosia for a few lectures: an orientation, A history lesson, and a crash course in Greek. The orientation was a helpful refresher of the material we reviewed in our fourth pre-departure meeting. After the orientation, we had a lecture on the overview of Cyprus’ history. This lecture explained to us all the different countries that once held control of the island, from the original settlers to Alexander the Great to the Ottomans to the British and, Finally, independence. The history lecture also briefly touched o the war Cyprus had with Turkey and the current state of that situation. The last lecture we had today was Greek. This lesson, unfortunately, could not go into depth into the Greek language but was helpful nonetheless. It taught us some valuable phrases to be polite to the local Cypriots.

Once we returned to Limassol, we could go on a guided walking tour. Throughout the walking tour, we visited places near and including the old port. We stopped at each location and were given an informative speech about each area. Another thing we could take away from the guided tour was what ruler built what. Due to the History lecture at the University of Nicosia, we knew which rulers had which style of architecture. During our walking tour, we could see the effects each ruling dynasty had on Cyprus.

After the walking tour, we returned to the hotel to get changed and ready for dinner. When we left for dinner, we headed to the marina. At the marina, the University of Pittsburg paid for dinner, and I had the luxury of trying different kinds of meat. One that stood out was the sausage with a licorice taste. Unfortunately, I was not too fond of it. However, it was still an invaluable experience to be able to try a Cyprian dish while abroad in Cyprus