Today we visited Kakopetria, an isolated mountain town in central Cyprus. the landscape of the town is magical with the homes spanning a range of what seems to be over 100 feet of elevation spread through the valleys of the surrounding mountains. The oldest parts of the town are hundreds of years old with the oldest building near the streams that run through the valleys, as expected for easier water access. As the town has grown, they built a water system to transport drinkable water to all posts of the main town through pipes so the town is one of the only places in Cyprus that water is free. The older homes are built up with large volcanic rock for the ground floor walls and the second floors were made of mud brick. In our free time in the town, a few of my friends and I found a hiking trail just outside the town. On the way up we saw magical sights of the town whole and seeing how widespread the town went and even other towns in nearby towns. Not only that, but on the way up we passed a few isolated houses, one of which inhabited by an old couple maintaining the land, which makes me think about my own retirement and how I would love that kind of life. Another sight we saw was an old castle that is being used as a part of a massive house built into the side of a mountain that had a whole infinity pool, basketball court, and not to mention the main castle looked at least a few hundred years old. At the top, we found a bench at a great outlook spot where you can see the whole town and other ones, many surrounding mountains, a fully maintained soccer field with bleachers built into the mountain, and even the beach and ocean with today’s good visibility. With some investigation after the fact, the soccer field is called Kakopetria stadium, and the part of the ocean we saw was about 10 miles away!

Earlier today, we visited St. Nicholas of the roof church in Kakopetria. In the region, as opposed to building grand churches for many people, the mountain towns build many smaller churches. To put it in perspective, the main room was a little crowded for our group, 28 in total. The church was from the Byzantine time period of Cyprus with all of the painting inside being from the 11th or 12th century. These paintings are made with a specific style of art which makes them last as long as they have called fresco. Fresco is when the paint is just wet enough to stick to a plaster wall, but dry enough so that it won’t flake off after some time. Unfortunately, because of the fragile art, we could not take pictures inside the church, but all of the paintings depicted scenes from the life of Christ just as most churches do. A few key differences in this churches art than other’s is that the walls and ceilings are filled with Fresco paintings with only structural beams left unpainted in the main room. One notable differences were that Christ was drawn to be very malnourished on the cross and eastern church habit, as opposed to western churches usually painting him fed just fine. Another painting difference is a scene of Mary breastfeeding Jesus, which is not found in any other churches. The art from the painters is incredibly detailed and really tells the story even for people who do not already know the story of Christ. This was very useful because almost all people at the time were illiterate, so being able to understand what preachers were preaching in the gospel is priceless. Touring so many churches has taught me so much about the religion, because being Jewish, I was not incredibly informed on the new testimate. However, I do find it interesting that churches only depict scenes from the new testimate, but not the old testimate, even though Christian’s believe in both the new and old testimates.