To start off our first full day in Nicosia, we traveled to the University of Nicosia (UNIC) for a few lectures. As soon as we stepped on the campus I was in awe. The architecture is so modern and everything is so clean and organized. We entered a mid-size lecture hall for our first lecture of the day: History of Cyprus by Dr. Emolios A Solomou. Due to its strategic location, Cyprus was conquered by a multitude of empires throughout its history. We started learning about Egyptian rule, and then made our way through Greek tribes, the Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Venetian Empire, Ottoman Empire, and finally British rule. Similar to America, Cyprus was also colonized by Britain starting in 1878 up until Cyprus gained independence in 1960. There were many Greek Cypriots who opposed this British colonization due to the fact that they wanted to become part of Greece. However, Greece did not want this to happen so instead they were taken under British control. Nationalists from both Greek and Turkish Cypriots fueled the fight for independence from Britain which led to the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus. This came with an agreement from Greece, Turkey, and Britain (Cyprus was not actually involved in this decision). This established the constitution of Cyprus which prescribed a power sharing between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Despite the fact that Cyprus is no longer a British colony, there are still some aspects of the culture that are considered British. Some examples of this would be the outlets (they are usually in the UK) and driving on the left side of the road.

Although I have never considered myself a history buff, I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Solomou’s lecture this morning. He was extremely knowledgable on the topic and once it was over, I felt like I knew exponentially more about Cyprus history than I first did when we walked in. I thought it was so interesting to go through a timeline of who was ruling over Cyprus during the different eras. I am a very visual learner so this is when all of the history started to click for me and I connected all of the dots between the empires and timelines. I also found it very interesting that Cyprus gained so much of its religious history during the Byzantine era. It made me think about what impacted religion in America, specifically Judaism. I wonder if there is any history with my synagog similar to that of some of the churches in Cyprus. He also said something along the lines of, “Not just Cyprus, but in the world, we lack leaders who stand by principles and real values”. As someone who is of voting age with a presidential election coming up, this really stuck with me. I will definitely keep this in the back of my mind when evaluating which candidate I will vote for when November comes along.

After we finished with Dr. Solomou, we took a 20 minute break where most of us went to get coffee. This was our first encounter with The Block which is like a boujee version of the Eatery… I don’t think I will ever be able to go back to the basement of Towers after seeing how UNIC students eat. After we got back to the same lecture hall, we started our crash course on the Greek language. As I touched on yesterday in my blog, Cypriots actually do not speak Greek in their day to day life and instead speak Cypriot which is considered a dialect similar to ancient Greek. This is what the professor covered in our hour long lecture today. I did not know that Greek is actually has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language! The disc of Phaestos and ancient rocks used to vote to ostracize people from society are just some examples of this. Since I am a part of a Greek organization at Pitt, I already knew the Greek alphabet coming in. However, I did not know the sounds that any of the letters make, so it was really cool to see her putting them together to speak. One expression that she taught us that I definitely plan on using throughout the rest of our stay is “Hareeka!” which means glad to meet you! I have had so many great conversations with Cypriots and I am glad that I will be able to say this to them before departing to show my respect for their language and culture.

A little side note: When we were walking around Nicosia during our free time we passed by an EY building. As an accounting major, seeing one of the big 4 in a foreign country made me so excited to see an example of one of the international places that I could live if I (hopefully) make it to the big 4 so I though that I would include it