Today in Nicosia, we visited the University of Nicosia for the very first time. I was anxiously anticipating how the campus compared to American universities, especially a city like the University of Pittsburgh. In the beginning, the lecturer talked in depth about the history of Cyprus, even dating back to ancient times. Richard the Lion, the King of England took over Cyprus in late 1100s, but then the British once again regained rule of the island in 1878 from the Ottoman Empire, which was the focal point of our early discussion. As said by the professor, this was done because of Cyprus’s very convenient location. It is very close to three continents, right on the Mediterranean, and has all kinds of people. The Cypriots originally welcomed British rule, as it restored order, but soon the British taxed the Cypriots heavily, and they quickly found out the British were just there to keep Russians out of the Mediterranean. Finally, in 1955, the Cypriots revolted and in 1960, gained their independence from Britain.

The professor was very informative and it was very interesting to hear about the various rulers of the island and nits history of wars, conquerers and leaders. Cyprus is truly a melting pot of cultures because of its past, which puts things into an interesting perspective. We even got to learn about the Cyprus flag history, which is orange because blue and red were not allowed due to those being the colors of surrounding Greece and Turkey’s flags. Overall, learning about the full timeline of Cyprus was one of the more interesting things I have done in an educational setting.

We then learned about the Greek language in our second lecture. Cypriots surprisingly do not speak the Greek dialect of Greek, and instead have their own but similar language that more resembles Ancient Greek. It is actually the oldest language in the Mediterranean, dating back to over 3000 years ago. There was a presentation on some artifacts along with some of the customs of Greek culture, including gender roles in the family. Finally, we got to learn some Greek! We learned greetings, questions, and numbers at the end, where I learned that the number 4 is tesera, which sounds cool to me for some reason. Overall, this was an information-packed lecture which I definitely enjoyed overall.