Before coming to Cyprus, I understood that there was previous conflict between the Cyprian Turks and Cyprian Greeks. I assumed that this conflict was due to Religion but when attending Dr. Solomou’s lecture, I learned that this was not the case. Instead, the conflict was purely political. This interested me. Also, in school, I learned a lot about American history, but not much about European history. Because of this, I was greatly interested in the participation of Cyprus throughout history.

I was extremely impressed with the knowledge and story-telling ability of Dr. Solomou at the University of Nicosia. When sitting in his lecture about a brief history of Cyprus, I learned many things, such as the correlation between power and religion. If a leader was able to spread his religion, he was able to gain followers, who would then be willing to expand the empire for religious purposes. Cyprus has an interesting role because whatever empire was ruling at the time wanted Cyprus since it is in an extremely powerful location for transferring goods across the empire. For example, the Venetians build many Catholic Monasteries and cathedrals, but when the Ottoman Empire took over, these Catholic buildings were converted for Muslim purposes.

Even though historical conflicts tended to be due to opposing religious views, the recent Cyprian tension between the Greeks and Turks was political. Dr. Solomou explained that both sides respected each others religions but had different ideas of what was best for Cyprus. I still find it fascinating that two groups of people who were opposing ideas still found peace within religion.

As well as this lecture of Cyprian history, we learned about basic Greek language. Since I had never learned Greek from my mother even though she spoke Greek, I had always wanted to learn. I knew a few words like “ti kaneis” which means hello, “kalinihta” which means goodnight, and a few other words like “sagapo” which means I love you. Even though I already knew a lot of the words they taught us at this lecture, it reignited my urge to learn Greek.