Tuesday July 18, 2006 – Closure and the Bizarrely Ginormous Pepper Grinder

Well loyal blog readers, there’s a bit of a blog backlog of 8 days in London and this past weekend which thecyreallife staff is working feverishly on. However, I just wanted to give you the update that our six month tour of duty in Cyprus is coming to a close. We will part ways with our almost Greece, not quite European (with a dash of Middle East thrown in for good measure) home away from home Thursday morning. The flight timing has nothing to do with the excitement with our neighbors to the East (by the way life in Cyprus has not changed one bit – you have no idea anything is going on less than an hour flight away), but coincided with a cheap flight home on Olympic Airways. On a side note, we flew Olympic Airlines to and from Greece, and were somewhat flabbergasted by the antiquated dual propped relic that provided our transportation from Santorini to Athens. The ramshackled appearance of what looked like individually molded and hammered on squares of aluminum combined with the retro interior, almost induced me, for once, to pay attention to the safety demonstration up front. Almost as shocking as my interest in the seatbelt and emergency exit revue, was my inability to coerce myself into consuming the oddly shimmery “meat” cold cuts and cheese platter. Needless to say, our standards for this flight home are skimming the bottom of the barrel, but I digress.

The finality of our departure in has caused to both reminisce about the wonderful memories and friendships these past sixth months have bestowed us. It really is amazing how quickly six months in a lifetime can come to pass. In a future blog, I will definitely elaborate on all these little warm fuzzy tidbits, but tonight was just another very typical evening (although a bit later than usual). “C” worked until about 8 PMish and I hopped on my “hog” and cycled down to meet up with her, the Canadian, and the German for dinner. And as usual, the topic of conversation began with a mildly envious question of what I made of my “not stuck in an office” retired lifestyle day followed by ordering a laundry list of items from the menu. Our long drawn out “charged to the project” dinner of starters, mains, wine, dessert, several night caps of double baileys on ice, entertaining conversations of cultures, childhood follies, politics, vacations… and hearty laughs (spurred on by the bizarrely ginormous pepper grinder which the German alluded to the “Elias Country Club incident”) endured ‘til the wee hours of the morning – shutting down the restaurant and neighboring café. Sensing the impending workday, we all went our separate ways home at 3AM. “C” leisurely peddled mildly under the influence the quiet deserted (very safe) streets of Limassol as I trotted along beside her. On these late evening strolls “C” and I can share our thoughts from the day, recall topics from the evening conversation, laugh about a whole slew of things, say hi to one of the many Cyprus cats, “race” home… As I sit here writing (still in the wee hours of the morning), it really strikes me in retrospect all the terrific, what seemed trivial at the time, memories (like our late evening strolls) that we will cherish from this mildly backwater slow paced little island.