I commenced my first full day in Cyprus with a walk to the pier to catch a gorgeous sunrise. We were met with a good bit of clouds, which made the sighting slightly less exposed, but the view was incredible none the less. I decided to capitalize on the early morning by working out in a local park, and headed over to join the group for breakfast. I can proudly say that I got to drink the most incredible orange juice today. I’m typically not a fan of juices in the morning, but the orange juice this morning was something I would come and live in Cyprus for just to experience every morning. Once we cleaned the cafe of almost everything they had out, we caught a bus to our partnering university – The University of Nicosia (UNIC).

Once arriving at the university, we were immediately put in awe by the school, with a set of stairs in a circular pattern, imitating those of ancient Greek theaters. This, along with the elegant white furniture and vines decorating the outdoor dining area immediately hooked me and had me daydreaming about a semester abroad. After a delicious lunch, we were on our way to our first lecture.

As most lectures do, we began all the way at the beginning, learning about the diverse history of the Island of Cyprus. I was fascinated to learn that Cyprus had been controlled by more than a dozen different empires and counties in its history, even though the island itself is relatively small and somewhat out of the way. Its history is so chaotic in fact, that the ruling power of the island changed three times in less than two year at one point due to invasion and selling of the island! However, I was astonished that Greece, although not being the ruling power on the island for hundreds of years, has remained such a large influence on the island, with the southern half of the island speaking in ancient Greek and having a proud affiliation with the country of Greece. 

Our history lesson came to an abrupt stop, as we had too little time for all the questions we were asking, but it was now time to learn some basic Greek. Naturally, we learned the simple “hello”’s, “how are you”’s, and “thank you”’s, but we soon learned a few numbers. With 24 students in our group, of course we had to learn up to 24 so we could have a Greek count off! We later got on the bus and showed off our new count-off skills to our bus driver and headed back to Limassol to enjoy our last stop of the evening: Dinner!

I can officially state another cultural finding during this dinner. The dinner’s here are officially HUGE! We were sat down for some family style dining and instead of bringing our just a few plates for the whole table to share, we were brought the largest, charcuterie board-esque dishes I have ever seen. Better yet, they had us share them between two people. I’ve never been more upset to get full as I was tonight because the food was all so delicious, with traditional purple Cyprian sausages (I’m assuming they were made with Olives), and pork for gyros. After a meal like that, it was certainly time to hit the sheets…