Dayyy 8!!! Today we visited the University of Nicosia. From Dr. Solomon we learned a lot about the history of Cyprus. He brought us into a Time Machine and explained the history of the conquering and reconquering of Cyprus. We started in 7400 BC, with Cyprus’s first civilization which was found around the outside of Nicosia. It was then conquered and sold to a number of different countries/groups before eventually landing into the hands of the British in 1878. The British originally acquired it from the Ottomans, who peacefully transferred ownership to the British. The British were able to get the Ottomans to peacefully hand over the island in the name of protection, which I found interesting, cause Cyprus is in a great location. At first the Cypriots were excited to assimilate with the British and get rid of the Ottomans, but after time many Cypriots wanted to either become their own state or combine with Greece. Around the year 1931, however, the first signs of uprisings started to appear. Dr. Solomon showed us a picture of a house that was burned down, which turned out to be the governors house. After much more fighting, eventually Cyprus was able to gain its independent in 1960.
Dr. Solomon’s lecture today provided me a lot of insight into the Cyprus history, both modern and ancient. I had no idea how long ago the history of Cyprus went back to, and knowing now that people have lived on this island for almost 10 thousand years now is something that I will never forget. It made me wonder how the original Cypriots got to Cyprus and what they thought when they made contact with the Greeks. I was also surprised by how many times Cyprus was taken over. From the timeline he showed I got that Cyprus was owned by 14 different groups! Some of the time of ruling would last hundreds or thousands of years and some would only last a few years. The Egyptians seemed to have control of the island the longest, dating back to around 2500 BC, which makes sense because technology was not as advanced back then and Egypt is fairly close to Cyprus. In the more modern era I was surprised to learn that at some point 55 thousand Russians lived in Limassol, which was more than half the population there. It was also cool to learn the population percentage was around 82% Greek Cypriot and 18% Turkish Cypriot before the invasion. I knew it would lean towards more Greek Cypriots but I did not think it would be that much.
Our second lecture was a brief lecture on Greek language. It was one of my favorite lectures so far, and I enjoyed how engaging it was. Before coming on this trip I tried learning some Greek from Duolingo but was unable to remember much of what I learned once we got here, however this lecture taught me more than Duolingo ever did. We learned a bunch of the greetings as well as how to say things such as “can I get a coffee”. I was intrigued to find out that Greek has the longest document history of any Indo-European language with up to at least 3400 years of written records. From the lecture I learned that many of the letters in the Greek alphabet are similar to letters in the English alphabet with some differences. I think my favorite part of the lecture was learning how to count. I love knowing how to count in other languages for some reason, and I think I can count to 10 in at least 5 languages now! My number in Greek is “pente” which means 5! That’s how the shape pentagon got its name from I’m assuming. I think my favorite phrase though is “kalimera” which means good morning.
