Today was much more frustrating than yesterday, although much shorter. We left at 9:45, got photocopies made of the paperwork from yesterday, and were at immigration by just past 10:00. Marie, Lukas, and Katie stayed outside on the rocks under the trees and Helen and I waited in the hallway, where an old man gave me a seat, then a younger woman gave the old man a seat, and everyone was very friendly and talking with Helen. After about half an hour, it was my turn. The lady at the reception desk said that Mrs. Maria is not there and won't be back until December 1st, please come back in December. I said that they must have the file, though--could somebody else help me, please? She sighed, called a colleague, and I got to go into an inner office.

At this point, Helen started fussing, refused to nurse, didn't want to play with anything, and eventually started screaming. She has a very loud, piercing scream. While she was screaming and I was trying to talk with the lady, Katie came in, took her shoes off, and started to roll around on the floor, and when I told her to put her shoes on and stand up, she had a temper tantrum. I sat her on a chair, not particularly gently, and kept trying to talk with the lady who didn't feel particularly responsible for me.

She first tried to tell me that I need to apply for a yellow slip. I explained that we had applied in JANUARY, that we had been there FOUR times already. She finally looked for--and found--our file, and said that I need medical insurance for my "babies". (The Greek word that actually means "baby" is used for children of all ages, and Greek-speakers, even those quite fluent in English, tend to use the word "baby" in English, rather than child. Lukas and Katie do NOT like it when they say that to them, but I digress.) I said, "Yes, I have the E106 here, and the Cypriot medical card." She wasn't the slightest bit interested in the E106, but took the medical card off to photocopy.

Then she came back and said accusingly, "I need to see the E106." I smiled and handed her the E106, which she took off to photocopy.

Then she came back again (Helen was still screaming, by the way, but Katie had gone back outside to Marie and Lukas) and said, "Now we can send your application to Nikosia." I said, "My application has already been SENT to Nikosia, and returned to you here. Mrs. Maria called me and said that I only need to provide proof of medical insurance for the children, then I can be given the yellow slip." She said no, since I'm American, my paperwork all has to be done in Nikosia, they can't do anything here in Larnaka. However, the lady who is doing Mrs. Maria's work at the moment will be in on Monday, so I can come again on Monday as of 7:30, if I want. But everything will HAVE to be sent to Nikosia, and they now have everything required, so there's really no reason for me to come back in on Monday. I asked how long it will take (as last time we were at this point, they said up to five months), and she said one week.

With Helen still screaming, I finally said okay, and left. I got all the children in the car, Helen finally nursed and calmed down, and then I left all the children in the car and went back in. (I ignored lines and simply walked into the inner office.) I asked if it would be possible for ME to go to Nikosia, and she said yes, of course, and gave me a slip of paper with the address. Not having much faith in addresses in the meantime (not to mention that there is no place to look up addresses in Cyprus...), I asked her if she could show me on the map  where the immigration office in Nikosia is. She said yes, of course, and she and another colleague spent a very long time looking and my map and pointing out streets that they knew and having some long discussion of which I basically only understood the prepositions and conjuctions (while useful bits of speech, they don't help much in following a conversation), and finally told me no, they couldn't. I asked if they could then give me my paperwork, please, so that I could take it to Nikosia, and they said no, they will send it, that they have to send it to the police there. This made NO sense to me, I explained again that Mrs. Maria had said that everything is done, they were just waiting for the children's medical insurance, but she wasn't particularly interested. I explained that I hope to go to Germany at the beginning of December (oh yeah--that's another story, except that there really isn't one yet, since without the yellow slip, I can't go) and that I'm running out of time, and she said again, "One week."

I went back and sat in the car for a long time, with my head on the steering wheel, ignoring the children's fussing, etc., then finally left, and was home again by 11:15. Jörn called around 12:00 and I told him the story, and he's going to go in Monday morning at 7:30. But at that point, my paperwork will probably all have been sent to Nikosia anyway.

I'm just remembering that I never finished the passport saga, so I suppose I should finish that first. We borrowed a friend's car so Jörn could take Lukas to gymnastics and I could go to Nikosia on a Thursday afternoon. I tried somewhere around a dozen times to telephone to confirm that that was really okay, but there was never any answer. Just before leaving town, though, I tried one more time and got an answer--the first lady told me yes, of course, no problem, but she'd just check if her colleague was in that day. Her colleague was in and said no, of course I couldn't renew my passport in the afternoon--only in the morning. So much for that afternoon, although I then did go get new passport photos--at a different place, one Euro less, and four photos instead of two, but with my typical "Yuck--I hate having my photo taken" face. Anyway, I went the following Monday morning leaving home at 6:30. I of course hit rush hour in Nikosia, so didn't get to the embassy until nearly 8:00, and it was about two hours until I was through, but there were no problems, and three days later I got an e-mail telling me my passport was ready to be picked up. The trip to pick it up was totally uneventful--I even left absolutely everything except my car keys and my old passport in the car, to make security easy. (But they had cubbies for purses and such--I'd had to leave the diaper bag there the first time, although when I then said out loud to Helen, "Okay, Helen, no pooping," they did let me take out one diaper and the wipes to take in with me...)

On to the immigraton saga...

First of all, Cyprus is part of the European Union. Jörn and the children are Europeans, and I'm not only married to a European, I have permanent German residency status. Therefore, it should be a very straightforward matter to register our family here in Cyprus. Within a week or two of arriving, Jörn went to the immigration office and got, in writing, a list of what we needed to have in order to register.

I don't remember now exactly what was on that list, although I do know that passport photos were required, and we had to go get photos of Helen taken, but had recent enough ones of everyone else. Jörn went along to the appointment a month or two later, with all the required paperwork, and by himself, as they had specifically said that the rest of us didn't need to come.

At this second meeting, they asked him why he had bothered with certain items, and why on earth he didn't have certain others. A new appointment was made for June, and would he please bring the whole family.

In June we all showed up for the appointment, and after waiting outside for a long time, they called Jörn in, but looked confused about why he had bothered to bring along his wife and five children, and asked us to wait outside. So we waited outside in the parking lot in the June heat of Cyprus while Jörn was inside the air-conditioned building. (There were trees, at least, but no seats.) They changed their mind about certain requirements and asked us to return in July.

In July we all went again, and this time, although most of the meeting was with Jörn alone while we again waited in the parking lot (but this time I had brought water and snacks, at least), they did call us in at the end to check each face against the passports. Jörn and the children were all granted "yellow slips" (not quite residence permits, but the idea is basically the same--legal permission to be here), but the evil American was told that her paperwork had to be sent to Nikosia. They said that it could take up to five months, which would be the end of December, and that if it did indeed take that long, they could no longer give me a yellow slip, as my passport was due to expire June 11th, 2010, and had to be valid for at least six months past date of issue of the yellow slip--in other words, if they took until after December 11th to approve me, then I would no longer be approved. That was one reason I had to get a new passport. (I needed a new one anyway because it was questionable as to whether, when we return to Cyprus next February, they would let me in with a passport only valid for another four months. Some people said three months is fine, but we've heard so much conflicting information for so many countries that it's better not to risk it.)

Then at some point, the immigration office here in Larnaka called and said that they had everything back from Nikosia, and that Larnaka was in trouble with Nikosia for having granted the children yellow slips, as they had "no proof of health insurance." Of course, now it was too late, as they HAD given the children yellow slips, however, ever since then, they've been holding MY yellow slip hostage until we provide sufficient proof of health insurance for the children. (The fact that we have USED this health insurance for four of the children, multiple times and twice at the emergency room, in the 10 months we have been here, is irrelevant.)

I have completely lost track of how many phone calls Jörn has made to Germany and to various offices in Larnaka, and he's visited four or five different offices here, as well, as he's been told at each one that a different one is responsible. We eventually obtained the required E106 form from our health insurance in Germany, which states that Jörn Lange, his wife Sheila Lange, and "all members of his household" are covered by complete health insurance. This form is of course in German, but it's a fill-in-the-blank form, with numbered blanks, and the idea is that these "E" forms ("E" for European--for members of the European Union) are universal. Here in Cyprus, they need only look at a blank form in Greek and see that if box so-and-so is checked on the German form, that means such-and-such. Germany cannot provide us with a form in Greek (or English or any other language)--only in German. That's the whole point of the E-forms. However, despite requiring it of us, nobody in Cyprus has the E106.

Soooo...the latest information we were given (after Jörn called, at my suggestion, the German consulate here in Cyprus) was that we should go to the Ministry of Health in Nikosia and get them to WRITE the children's name on our E106, put a nice official stamp on it, and everything will be fine.

Jörn took Jacob with him today to the worship seminar YWAM is running this week, and at a little past 9:00 I headed to Nikosia with the other four children. Just before 10:00, despite one missed turn, we arrived easily at the address given to us by the German embassy and marked clearly on the brand-new map we have of Nikosia as "The Ministry of Health." I'd enjoyed the slight detour, too, as we saw part of the amazing wall in the center of Nikosia, and I was thinking about how, if the meeting went quickly, we could go to the park at the wall, and maybe I'd phone up my friend Jane and ask if we could come hang out for awhile (she lives very close to there), or maybe I should just head back to Larnaka and get to immigration before they close at 11:30, or maybe we'd go to Ikea and I'd get another spice rack for my miniature books, or maybe we'd look for a decent-sized bookstore, or...well, there were many possibilities!

Pulling up to the building, though, I thought it looked rather deserted, except for the Pizza Hut take-away and the pharmacy on the ground floor, and I thought it was odd that there was no sign of any kind around what appeared to be the main entrance. And parking was very easy--plenty of space in the parking lot behind the building. Well, the very nice lady in the pharmacy told me that the Ministry of Health had moved two years ago, and that it was "verry, verry farr away." She thought it was behind the old general hospital, but she couldn't tell me how to get there, either, and it wasn't even on my map, although she could show me the general vicinity, but again emphasized that it was very far away. I pointed out that I had come from Larnaka and it wasn't as far as that, and I had to go there one way or another, and loaded the children back in the car.

The "other side of town" is starting to look quite familiar--that's where the German and U.S. embassies are--so I figured I'd head over there and probably see a sign for the "Old General Hospital", or at least be able to ask at a gas station or someplace. I didn't see any signs, and Helen was starting to get very upset about being in the car for so long. Traffic was much heavier, I was being distracted by Helen, and I got rather mixed up. I never did find where I was on the map, but by the sun eventually managed to get to the west side of the city and passed by the Presidential palace twice before I finally found a place to park and nurse Helen. I then went into an office supply store, where several of the staff as well as several of the customers were very friendly and helpful, and then finally one staff person who spoke excellent English even drew me a map--to the Old General Hospital, anyway, as she had no idea where the Ministry of Health might be.

I found the Old Hospital without any trouble, but missed the entrance the first time around, so got to drive around it twice, then into the parking lot, no place to park, back out and around the whole block again, and once more into the parking lot where I parked...um...well, probably not entirely legally, but safely, anyway, which is much more than can be said for most of the people parking in Cyprus. This time I left the children in the car and went to ask where the Ministry of Health is.

The lady at the front desk answered, "This is not the Ministry of Health. This is the Old General Hospital." I said "I know, but I was told that the Ministry of Health is very close." She told me to go out the back doors and then I would see the black building. Then I confused her by turning around and walking out the front door, but when I came back in a minute later with four children (and my purse and the bag full of paperwork...) she nodded.

We walked down the very long corridor in the obviously VERY old hospital, went out the creaky back doors, and found ourselves on the sidewalk, with no black building in sight. We walked for awhile, and then saw a modern building on the other side of the street that maybe could be considered black (it was all dark, reflective windows), but there was no sign in English on it. I carefully studied the Greek, but except for "Nikosia" (Lefkosia, actually, in Greek), several prepositions, and the address ("between the rivers", although more accurate would be "between the mostly dry sometimes trickles of water"), I didn't understand any of it. I should have at least found out what "Ministry of Health" is in Greek, but I hadn't.

Anyway, we did walk on a bit, but not seeing anything else that looked promising, we went back and went inside. There were several posters of health-related activities (brusthing teeth, washing hands, etc.) hanging up, so it looked promising. By the time it was my turn at the front desk, it was nearly 12:00. The lady there told me to see "Mrs. Marta, inside", and vaguely waved her hand behind her. There was a short hallway and three or four doors, all of them open, but none of them had the name "Marta" on them. I put my head inside one where there seemed to be a lot of activity and asked (in Greek, this time) where Mrs. Marta was, and the lady there waved vaguely and said (in Greek, at least!), "Inside." I went in the direction I thought maybe she had pointed, but that lady wasn't Mrs. Marta either--it turned out that she was at the back of the first office into which I had looked--inside.

Mrs. Marta didn't speak the most fluent English, but it was certainly hundreds of times better than my Greek, and I tried to explain the situation. All I wanted her to do was to write the children's names on the E106 and put a stamp on it. She told me she needed our alien registration numbers, and I explained that that was the problem: I do not have one yet, and I'm trying to get one, and that's why I need this form filled out! She kept explaining that I couldn't have a medical card until I had an alien registration, and to please go to immigration and get registered, then she could give me a medical card. I told her that I don't want a medical card, and that I can't register until I have this form. I even told her in Greek that my husband and children are German, but I am from the United States, and that's why I have a problem.

Mrs. Marta finally called Mrs. Emily upstairs (in Cyprus, people are generally all called "Mrs." or "Mr." and their first name), and then handed the phone to me so I could explain this to Mrs. Emily. Mrs. Emily spoke excellent English, but could not understand why I needed this. I sympathized--in fact, I've been told by other people that there is no law requiring anyone to even have health insurance, so nobody understands why the immigration office is requiring this of us. However, the immigration office is refusing to register me without this, so it's not like I have a lot of choice. I talked with Mrs. Marta again, and she called Mrs. Emily again, and then Mrs. Emily came downstairs to see my paperwork and talk with me personally.

By this time the children were getting rather ansty, and although I did quiet them, I apologized to Mrs. Marta and explained that they'd been in the car for nearly three hours and it was hard sitting for so long. (Actually, the car was only about 2 1/2 hours, but we'd also waited for awhile.) She raised her eyebrows and said, "From Larnaka?" and I explained that we'd first gone to where the Ministry of Health used to be, but a lady at the pharmacy there had told me that it had moved two years ago, and I had had a lot of trouble finding the new place. She said, "No, not two years ago--very recently!" I asked when, and she just said again, "Very recently, not two years!"

Mrs. Emily appeared to mostly understand, and said that they'd be happy to put the children on the form and issue a medical card for my husband and children, but that they couldn't issue one for me, because I didn't have an alien registration number. Nobody cared at all that we have European health cards which we can already use at any hospital and that I don't WANT a Cypriot medical card, but I finally said that was fine. She took the paperwork with her and asked me to wait.

In the meantime, Helen had a diaper that HAD to be dealt with, and immediately. We were given permission to use the "employees only" toilet, and off we went.

When we got back, Mrs. Marta happily handed me a medical card for Jörn and the children and the E106 with the children's names on it, but no stamp, and when I looked it over, I saw that MY name had been crossed off!!! I asked her why my name had been crossed off, and she said because I don't have an alien registration number, and therefore, cannot be issued a Cypriot medical card!!

I did not cry. I am very proud of myself. I explained again, very, very slowly, "This form was issued by my German health insurance to show that I have health insurance from Germany. I do not NEED a Cypriot medical card, I need to get the yellow slip! If they don't believe that I have health insurance, they will not register me. This form was from Germany. This form was proof that I have health insurance. I do have health insurance. You should not have crossed out my name."

Mrs. Marta called Mrs. Emily again, I talked with her for awhile. They apologized. In the meantime, my name is crossed out, in ink, which makes it look as though I do not have health insurance. I wrote down Mrs. Emily's name and phone number, and she said that the immigration office should telephone her if they have a problem. I guess I'll find out tomorrow morning if that works.

We finally got back to the car and left the parking lot at 1:10, four hours after leaving home. No park, no visiting Jane, no Ikea, and likely no lunch, either, if Lukas was to get to gymnastics by 2:30, especially as it was now the middle of the lunch rush hour. (Most Cypriots go home for lunch and many stores close for a couple of hours in the middle of the day.) At 1:40 I pulled up to a Zorpas bakery and bought too-soft bread (didn't get our favorite bread, because that would have needed slicing which would have taken longer) and expensive cheese, which Marie made into sandwiches and handed out as I kept driving. We made it to gymnastics with 10 minutes to spare, I let Lukas out, and we came home and I started typing this. At 3:30 I picked up Lukas again, and now it's 4:45 and Lukas and Katie are playing outside and Marie is doing math.

Tomorrow I'm going to the immigration office here in Larnaka, but at least I know where that is, unless they've moved since July...

Our plan today was to go to the U.S. embassy in Nikosia to apply for a new passport for me (according to the website, only open from 7:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.), and then to Ikea for a growing list of "needed" items. One potential item was some sort of brainstormed idea for a hamster cage, cheaper (or at least bigger and nicer) than the only hamster cage at the pet store we visited last week, so on the way to Nikosia, we stopped at another pet store in case they had more acceptable hamster cages. We also had something to pick up at the post office, so not knowing if it might be something big, we thought it would be better to drive there than to walk.

However, this was what happened...

We started with the pet store that we'd gone to specifically because they were reputed to have the most hamster supplies--no hamster cages at all.

Then we went to the post office. As one street was blocked off, we turned into another and I jumped out and walked to the post office. It was only an envelope, but it had come open, so I had to sign for it. (It was the invitation to my host sister's wedding in Costa Rica, which is of course cool, but as we can't go, it made me sad...) Then when I walked back to where I thought the car was...it wasn't there. I walked back to the post office and retraced my steps, totally confused, wondering how I was ever going to figure out where we were parked, since I had obviously gotten it wrong. I wondered around several blocks, and as I returned the third or fourth time to where I thought the car had been, Jörn came driving around the corner. That WAS where he had been, but he'd had to move, because someone parked (and left) their car just opposite ours, in the narrow one-way street, so nobody could get by. Because of all the one-way streets and several of them closed because of construction, it took him quite awhile to get back--he couldn't just drive around the block.

Already running rather late, we finally headed out of town, with Helen screaming. We sang all of her favorite songs and a few others, and I finally said that it didn't matter whether we made it to the embassy, but we HAD to stop. So we stopped, filled Helen up with mama-milk, and then kept going. I suppose there were speed-limit signs on the freeway, but I didn't get the impression that my husband paid any attention to them. For that matter, nobody else did, either--we were being passed more often than not.

We found easily enough the place labled on the map as "U.S. Embassy", arriving at 10:55 a.m. Rather than try to find someplace to park, I jumped out of the car while Jörn waited, to ask if this WAS the embassy (there was plenty of barbed wire and several soldiers on duty, but it seemed rather strange that there was a Cypriot flag and a Greek flag, but no U.S. flag...), and if I could still get in 5 minutes before closing time. Well, it wasn't--it was a Cypriot army base, and has been for a very long time. They could tell me that the U.S. embassy was somewhere completely different, but not how to get there.

So although now it was obviously too late, we thought we'd at least head for the other side of town, near the presidential palace and the German embassy, to see if we could find the U.S. embassy to be able to get there more easily another day. We actually found it very easily--it had a huge flag, flying high, which my husband spotted from the next street. (And my German-born children started singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" when they saw it, which despite my 19 years outside of the U.S. and my general lack of patriotism, I thought was pretty cool!) Again, my husband stopped the car and I jumped out to ask the lady on duty if there was any chance that the website was wrong and I could still get in, although it was 11:15. Well, the website was wrong: for U.S. citizens, the embassy is open from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., every day except for Cypriot and U.S. holidays. Today happens to be a U.S. holiday. I thought about it for a moment and said, "Oh...Columbus Day?" but the lady didn't know--she's from Romania and has lived in Cyprus for 20 years. This happens to be my 20th October outside of the U.S. (making it more than half of my Octobers, as this is my 39th October...), the 19th consecutive one, so I'm not too up on U.S. holidays.

Back in the car, and we went to Ikea. We did find some of the stuff on our list, and some that wasn't, but several things that were on our list were not to be found. That's fairly typical of a trip to Ikea, so I suppose not so bad. And I'll be going to Nikosia again at least twice in the relatively near future--once to apply for my passport and once to pick it up--so I can stop by Ikea again.

I did get something to use as a base for the hamster cages (Jacob and Lukas are both getting hamsters...), but still have to go to a hardware/DIY store for heavy wire mesh, and then figure out how to attach it, etc.

When we got home, I wanted to put the passport application and all of our passports away, and couldn't find the photos that I had taken last week. They were nowhere to be found--not in my bag, not in the car. I even looked through all of the pages of all six passports (Jörn had his own in his own bag--I only had the children's and mine) and the three books in my bag, and finally cleaned out the car. I had everything on my lap between the not-embassy and the actual embassy, and my suspicion is that when I picked up my passport, wallet, and passport application to jump out of the car the second time, I missed the photos, so they fell off my lap (and out of the car) as I got out, and are now on the ground across the street from the U.S. embassy. I HATE having my photo taken, and it was actually the best passport photo I'd ever gotten (depsite the huge pimple on my chin), because Jacob was with me and made me laugh right before the photo was taken. Now I'm feeling sulky (because of the cost and the fact of another photo at all) and have to go get more expensive stupid-sized photos taken, so it will be a much more typical photo that I'll be stuck with for the next 10 years. (The U.S. requires 5 cm by 5 cm--and then CUTS THEM DOWN TO THE EXACT SAME SIZE AS EUROPEAN PASSPORT PHOTOS!!!! So I always have to pay extra for the weird size and only get two photos instead of four. For a short time (I think Marie's second passport and Lukas's first, in the summer of 2002), they did accept European passport photos, but mostly I've had to get the U.S.-size ones--that's 11 passports just in the last 12 years, and two more are due for renewals next year.)

I was about to say that I'm finished with my whining for tonight, and then the computer erased that sentence for me, which reminded me that I'm on the "new laptop", which likes to erase things if I bump it just right, because the "old laptop", which I like much better when it is working, is not working again.

Now I'll stop, and go to bed early. Tomorrow has to be a better day.

Jacob hasn't liked sleeping in a bed since he was about four or five--he's mostly slept on the floor. For the last six months or so, Lukas has also been sleeping on the floor more often than not. Last week the boys cleaned their room completely, then put colored tape on the floor to define "Jacob's", "Lukas's", and "shared" areas of the room. In the process, Lukas gave me several blankets to put away, as he decided (at the end of September, after four months of Cypriot summer...) that it was really too warm for so many blankets.

Last night he asked me to give him some blankets, as the floor was too hard. I said, "Well, you COULD sleep on the mattress, you know!" His eyes lit up and he said, "That's a good idea! I can put the mattress on the floor under the bed, then when I throw toys on the bed, they won't bounce!!"

So now Lukas has his mattress on the floor under his bed. The same bed we brought to Cyprus because Lukas was so heartbroken at the thought of leaving it behind--it was the only children's bed we brought. He's slept in it maybe three times since we came. But at least he has a good place to keep toys without them bouncing.

What I haven't figured out yet is why we bought Jacob a bed when we got here. He didn't want one, and didn't want to lose that space in his room, but I thought he should have one. Maybe for the same reason my parents insisted on getting me a bed (a futon, actually) when I gave my bed to my little sister when she was big enough for a bed, since I preferred sleeping on the floor anyway and didn't want a bed taking space up in my room. Not that I know what that reason was, nor do I know why I preferred sleeping on the floor myself...

When we moved to Cyprus in January this year, the only bicycle we brought was Lukas's. It's a very sturdy beginning bicycle that I bought used for Marie nearly eight years ago, and Marie, Jacob, and Lukas all learned to ride on it. (Well, actually Lukas learned to ride on a friend's bike, but perfected his technique with this one.) Marie's and Jacob's bicycles were both falling apart and I ran out of time to pack mine and left it with a friend, thinking maybe to bring it out to Cyprus some time in the future, Jörn doesn't ride a bike, and Katie and Helen don't, either. I also brought the bike trailer.

I bought the bike trailer when Marie was three months old and used it (in December, in Germany, no less!) quite a lot for about a month. Then we moved so that my husband's great-aunt could come to live with us. The combined facts of having the bicycle and trailer in a very hard-to-get-to place in the cellar, and not wanting to be gone for longer than necessary from the great-aunt, meant that I didn't use the trailer again until about three years later, with both Marie and Jacob, and used it all of once, I think. (Maybe twice?) Then we moved again and it was much easier to get the bike and trailer out, so I used it once to go to playgroup, was concerned about how horribly dizzy I got, then found out I was pregnant with Lukas. Oh, and the last seven and a half years in Germany, we lived at the top of a very long, very steep street. That meant that going anywhere was easy, coming home was a pain. So between weather, pregnancies, great public transportation, being out of the country, and laziness...well, I used the trailer maybe half a dozen times in all those years. But I still like the IDEA very much, and where we live in Cyprus is much flatter! 

But a bike trailer without a bike isn't much use, so a month or two after arriving, we bought a (very) used bicycle for me, which turned out to need new tires (which I didn't get), and a bike for Jacob, which is great--especially as it was only 10 Euros. Then a couple of months ago we finally got bikes for Marie and for me. We rode them home, and parked them--it was WAY too hot for me to be willing to go bike-riding!

This afternoon, though, I realized that the weather is finally perfect, so pumped up the tires of the bike trailer, put Katie and Helen in it, and the boys and I went for a short, but glorious, bike ride along the salt lake. (Which, incidentally, had quite a lot of water in it for several days last week, and still has a little bit!) Helen looked confused and curious as I buckled her in, but within about five seconds of starting, she was humming to hear the funny sound that makes going over bumps. :-) She absolutely loved it. I had a hard time keeping up with the boys, but blamed it on the 35 or so kilos I was pulling, not on the mumble-mumble kilos on my saddle.

Yes, there are about four months of the year that it's too hot for ME to be willing to ride a bike (the boys were riding all summer long), but the public transportation here is between bad and non-existant, and we only have one car, and it's basically flat all around here, and it doesn't rain much,  sooooo...I hope that today's bike ride doesn't stay the only one this year! For that matter, I would like to go for another, longer, ride with all the children tomorrow, and on Tuesday might even use the bikes "for real", rather than walking to playgroup. The traffic conditions are a bit scary, so I'm not sure about that yet. We'll have to see how the "practice" goes tomorrow, especially with Lukas. Nobody is supposed to ride on the sidewalk, not even children, but the worst stretch traffic-wise has a really wide sidewalk, and when we walked to playgroup last week there were hardly any people there, so I'm thinking we might just ride on the sidewalk and see what happens.

It's great having friends we can call in the middle of the night, although it would be nice if we didn't need to call them...

To start with, we've just had a somewhat...challenging...three weeks with a visitor, so I started off the evening last night tired. I do know that I've gotten better and better at packing over the years, all the same, it puzzled me how it could take a single guy about 4 times longer to pack for himself than it takes me to pack for seven people. At the end, despite the fact that he'd taken dozens of stones from the beach here (not entirely sure that that's legal...) and bought hundreds of Euros' worth of clothes (much cheaper here than in Germany, apparently--I wouldn't know, as I don't shop either place...), he was surprised to find that his suitcase was seven kilograms overweight. At 1:15 this morning, as my husband (Jörn) was more than ready to leave for the airport, "G" started going on and on about how they'd be sure to look the other way, etc. and that he was just going to risk it. (On the way here he had six kilos too much and got away with it by saying, "Look, I'm visiting a family with five children who moved to Cyprus seven months ago--they need their chocolate and Haribo!" The lady apparently said, "I shouldn't do this, but..." and let him get away with it. He thinks he charmed her, I think she was tired of listening to him talk. I'm not feeling very charitable, I have to admit.) 

But we asked what his plan of action was if they didn't (at 22 Euros per kilo too much, that would be an expensive seven kilos!!), and he was quite surprised to realize that Jörn, who was supposed to work at 7:00 a.m. today, only intended to drop him off at the airport and come back home--not hang around for an hour or so. So G decided to re-pack and leave things here for us to ship to him.

Then just before 1:30, as they (Jörn and G) were about to head out the door, half an hour later than intended, Lukas came into the living room and said sleepily, "Jacob fell out of bed." That was rather surprising, not only as Jacob is ten years old and has never fallen out of bed before , but also because he very rarely sleeps IN bed--he usually sleeps on the floor. I asked if he was crying or bleeding and Lukas said yes to both, so I headed to see what was up--Jörn, the less lazy and more compassionate parent of the two, had already gone to Jacob. I found Jacob sitting on the bathroom floor, Jörn cleaning blood from Jacob's face and trying to locate the source of the bleeding to stop it. Jacob had a gash on his cheek over an inch long. It wasn't until we got to the hospital that we realized that the blood caked all over his eyebrow was not from the same wound, but from a similar gash on his eyebrow.

The thought of G missing his flight just did not bear thinking of, and Jacob was dizzy and there was an awful lot of blood on his bedroom floor and leading to the bathroom, so we didn't want to wait for Jörn to take G to the airport and come back, and even though we temporarily (as of yesterday afternoon) have two cars, we also didn't want to leave sleeping children on their own. (I might have been tempted to if they'd all been asleep--I would have woken up Marie and told her what we were doing--but Lukas was still awake and had started crying again because G was leaving. Having no idea how long I'd be gone, it wouldn't have been a good idea anyway.) So Jörn took G to the aiport in the borrowed car and I called Richard. 

Richard answered his phone extremely coherently for 1:30 a.m. and came over right away, and I put Helen (who had been awake since 12:30 and I hadn't even bothered trying to get back to sleep, as she was useful in helping keep me awake until G's departure) and Jacob into our car and drove to the hospital.

The emergency room looked crowded when we walked in, but I quickly realized that all the people there were with only one person, who was already being seen to, and we were taken straight into an examining room. When Jörn and I had taken Lukas to the emergency room in April (while, incidentally, Richard's wife, Sue, babysat the other children), they hadn't let me go with him because of Helen, so being there on my own this time I was prepared to fight to stay with him, but they didn't blink an eye at Helen this time. (Well, actually, they all blinked lots of eyes at Helen, flirting madly with her as she flirted back!!) They discussed back and forth about whether they should stitch or use Steri-Strips (I didn't get a whole lot of the conversation, as it was in Greek, but "Steri-Strips" in Greek is...roll of drums..."Steri-Strips") and finally settled on Steri-Strips.

Jacob was great, squeezing my hand tight and groaning a tiny bit, but holding his head perfectly still, as three people worked on him. We of course were asked how it happened, and I said that Jacob said he fell out of bed and must have landed on Legos or something--who knows, as he has a ten-year-old boy's bedroom. The doctor looked rather skeptical, which made me very uncomfortable, and he examined Jacob all over, also finding two bruises on his leg. Jacob said he was coming down the ladder (his bed is a "captain's bed"--higher than a regular bed, but not by a lot--the ladder only has two rungs) and slipped, and he didn't know what he'd hit. After they'd finished with the Steri-Strips and were filling out a form for getting an x-ray, Jörn arrived. Yes, I CAN manage an emergency run to the hospital on my own (have a bit too much experience as it is), but it's SO much easier with my husband there, too, and I was very glad to see him!

Jacob had the x-ray (he said they took three or four, all of his head), they checked the x-rays and said that he was fine, and we were told to keep him quiet and not to let the wounds get wet for four or five days. The doctor told Jacob no skateboarding or football, that this was a time to sit inside and play computer games, at which Jacob looked insulted and said, "I'll read." (That cracked me up, as he likes computer games at least as much as his mother does and plays even more, but I'm glad he also thought of reading!) Anyway, fun fun--keep him quiet and dry. We've gone to the beach nearly every day for the last three months, and on the evenings we don't go,  Jacob plays loud and wild games of hide-and-seek and tag with the neighborhood children. I figure I'll at least catch up on the reading-aloud that I've meant to do but haven't, because Jacob is usually running around outside...

To finish the story, we got home and let Richard go home to his own bed, Jacob went to bed in our bed, and Helen and I went to bed in Katie's bed. (Katie and Marie have a bunk bed with a single bed on top and a double bed underneath. On any given night they might both be on the top, both be on the bottom, or one in each--last night Marie was in the top bunk and Katie was in the bottom.) I first removed a coloring book, several marking pens, three stones, and a spinning top, then there was plenty of room for us. Katie woke up and was very, very pleased to see us in her bed, but Helen was not at all pleased to have Katie's arm around her. Despite the fact that it was 3:00 a.m. I had a hard time falling asleep, not being able to read first, but eventually managed, and the next thing I knew it was 7:15. Jörn had set his alarm for 7:00, so he could call and say he's not going to work this morning and was already back asleep. And now it's time to leave to take the children to the last day of holiday club (VBS for U.S.ians), and Jacob wants to go too, so I'm going to be staying. My bet is that within half an hour, Jacob will decide it's too loud anyway and want to come home.

I've seen various forms of these rules, which totally crack me up. The scary part for me is how many people don't even get the joke! Anyway, here's one list, which I found while trying to figure out where the list originated. This was the best explanation, in my opinion, and below is a partial list. Enjoy!

Make sure each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.

Just between you and I, the case of pronoun is important.

Watch out for irregular verbs which have crope into English.

Verbs has to agree in number with their subjects.

Don't use no double negatives.

Being bad grammar, a writer should not use dangling modifiers.

Join clauses good like a conjunction should.

A writer must be not shift your point of view.

About sentence fragments.

Don't use run-on sentences you got to punctuate them.

In letters essays and reports use commas to separate items in series.

Don't use commas, which are not necessary.

Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.

Its important to use apostrophes right in everybodys writing.

Don't abbrev.

Check to see if you any words out.

In the case of a report, check to see that jargonwise, it's A-OK.

As far as incomplete constructions, they are wrong.

About repetition, the repetition of a word might be real effective repetition - take, for instance the repetition of Abraham Lincoln.

In my opinion, I think that an author when he is writing should definitely not get into the habit of making use of too many unnecessary words that he does not really need in order to put his message across.

Use parallel construction not only to be concise but also clarify.

It behooves us all to avoid archaic expressions.

Mixed metaphors are a pain in the neck and ought to be weeded out.

Consult the dictionery to avoid mispelings.

To ignorantly split an infinitive is a practice to religiously avoid.

Last but not least, lay off cliches.

Okay, so I was born in Southern California, in a place called Oceanside, which is even actually right by the ocean, and we apparently went to the beach on a regular basis. But I don't remember it at all, and we moved north when I was 3 1/2 or 4. The first time I actually remember being to the beach was when I was 12--we went to Disneyland and camped near the beach, and I loved it. As I recall, it was all stones--no annoying sand. The next time I remember was when I was 18, went to Disneyland again (this time with my high school graduating class), and I hated it, but I don't think that had to do with the beach itself, even though it was sandy, but with the fact that I did NOT want to be on that trip and had a bad attitude about it the whole time. I'm sure I'd been to the beach other times during my childhood, but I honestly don't remember them. Mom? Sibs? Do any of you read my blog?

When I was 18 I went to Mexico for a year, lived six hours from the coast, and went with the youth group to the beach over a weekend, which also happened to be my birthday. Except for getting sunburned after sitting in the back of a pickup truck for six hours, and the campfire where they all sang happy birthday to me and each and every person gave me a hug (I love Latin America!), I don't remember much from that time, either. Is it possible I didn't even go in the water?

I've also been to the beach several times in Costa Rica: once with the group of exchange students when I was there the first time in 1988, once with my host brother and some of his friends (I think in 1993, but not sure), and once with most of the family two years ago. We did have a wonderful time, but the sand was all over the place and irritating. Having the outdoor shower in the house where we stayed was very helpful.

During my 17 1/2 years in Germany we made several day-trips (three-hour drive each way) to the beach in the Netherlands, but the last time was five years ago, and I'd also been to the Baltic Sea a couple of times, the last time 11 years ago.

I shouldn't forget that last year we lived in Muizenberg, South Africa, for four months, literally a five-minute walk from the beach...and I went to the beach a total of three times.

Oh yes, and we spent a couple of days at the beach in Thailand three years ago. I didn't want to be there (at the beach, that is--I loved the eight weeks in Thailand that we spent with the PEOPLE), hating being surrounded by tourists and sand. I annoyed my family and my friends by singing Sandra Boynton's wonderful song, "Tropical Sand." Here's my favorite line from the first verse: 

                     You like the tropical sun and the tropical sea, But hey, mon, Alaska sounds good to me.

Then the brilliant chorus:

                     I got de sand in my toes and de sand in my nose,

                    de sand in my ears and de sand in my clothes.

                     I got de sand in my hair and de sand in my face.

                     I think I got de sand most everyplace.

And we now live in Cyprus, where the furthest distance from the beach isn't very far, and we live in Larnaca, right on the coast. Without children I could probably walk to the beach in 20 minutes, we can certainly drive there in less than five minutes (parking and getting into and out of the car take longer than the drive), but I DON'T LIKE SAND. People had been telling me since January that we'd be going to the beach regularly once it got hot, and I was skeptical. I love being in the water, but I don't like sand, and I don't like the sun much, either. When my brother visited at the end of March we did go to the beach for an hour, but it was cold (which was nice) and only three of the children even went into the water. Wind kept blowing sand in my face and I sang my favorite beach song again. In the middle of May a friend took us sailing, and the beach there was all stones, which I liked very much, but the children missed sand.

So...by the end of May, my husband had found the perfect beach for us, in Pervolia, about 15 minutes away. Once I've gone to all the hassle of getting everyone and all the stuff into the car, I really don't care if we drive 15 minutes instead of five, especially for this perfect beach. It has stones where our stuff all stays sand-free, and right at the water it has sand for the children to play in. It stays shallow for a very long way, so I'm not paranoid about the children, and the very best part: when we go around 4:30 or 5:00 in the afternoon, we have SHADE--even in the water! And there are hardly any people there, and most of the people we've seen are Cypriots, not tourists. I've even had a couple of good exchanges with non-English-speaking Cypriots, and they're very hard to find. So for the last five weeks or so we have been to the beach three or four times every week, and we've been loving it.

Yesterday, however, we couldn't go to "our" beach, because we had a homeschool families get-together at the beach here in Larnaca, which is all sand. We did find a little bit of shade from the lifeguard station, but there was sand in everything and on everything, and there were people all over. I did enjoy the part where I was in the water, and I very much enjoyed having the time with the other parents, but I'm looking forward to going to Pervolia tonight. I'm going to have to get used to sand, though, too, as the homeschoolers want to meet at the beach every week, and our housegroup will be meeting at the beach every other week throughout the summer, starting tomorrow. And yesterday I promised my husband that I would NOT sing the best beach song that was ever written, so I didn't. And that's the point of this post--getting to sing the song! :-)

                  You like to be playing in the sun when it's hot.

                  I wish I could find me some shade where it's not.

                  You tell me the islands are very, very pretty,

                  but me, I find them...a little too gritty.

Any sand-coping strategies out there?

First, a semantics disclaimer: the word "homeschooling" for me does not say anything about our "homeschooling style", just that our children don't attend traditional school, public or private! We're fairly relaxed, which translates to wildy disorganized in the eyes of the highly structured, yet far too structured in the eyes of the true "free-learners." I can live with that. :-) Anyway, as I was saying...

Last week, with the whole family in the car, and for no particular reason, I asked my oldest daughter (Marie, 11 years and 9 months old) if she likes being homeschooled. She said, "Umm...yeah, I guess so." I asked why, and she said because she hates getting up early. (She went to public school for six months in third grade, nearly four years ago, and yes, she hated getting up every single school day of those six months.) I asked if she would want to go to school if she could start at, say,  at 10:00, and she said maybe. Then I told her that it's really okay to say what she thinks, that I wasn't trying to get her to answer what she might think I would like to hear, but that I really wanted to know. So she went on to say that at school she really liked art class and misses that, and she enjoyed recess and playing with the other children, and the rest was okay except for P.E. We talked about it a little longer and she admitted she likes math at home better (that surprised me--at the time, she seemed quite happy with the ridiculously easy busywork, not bothered in the slightest by not being challenged), and she likes all the reading we do, and she likes having lots of time to read on her own. It came down to that if she could do "flexi-schooling", which I recently read about in a book called "Free-range Education", she would probably like that very much, but that if that's not an option, homeschooling is better than going to school, although kind of in a "lesser of two evils" type of way. Not very encouaraging, really, but a good chat.

Then I turned to my 10-year-old son, Jacob, and asked him the same question. From him came the enthusiastic, "YES!! Of course!" I asked why, and he said, "Because I can get up when I want to and read what I want to and learn what I want to and however I want to and wherever I want to and I can think what I want to and say what I want to and nobody teases me and I can play with the friends I want to play with and do the things I want to do." I purposely didn't put any punctuation in there, because he definitely didn't use any while speaking! We talked a bit more, but there wasn't much more to say. From my point of view, he totally "gets" why we're homeschooling. (He attended first grade for six months, at the same time Marie was in third grade.)

Just to finish off, I asked my nearly-seven-year-old son, Lukas, if he likes being homeschooled, and the little ham said, "Yes, because I get to spend more time with my mother."  As a friend of mine wrote on her blog about her son a few weeks ago, he would probably make a great politician, but we have higher hopes for him. I did talk a bit more with Lukas, but as he's never been to school, he doesn't have anything to compare it to, and it boiled down to the fact that he's quite happy with his life.

Then Katie (will be four next month) said, "Mommy, you didn't ask me!" so I said, "Okay, Katie, do you like being homeschooled?" She put on her silly little "I'm-pretending-to-be-shy-because-so-many-people-think-that's-cute" face and said, "Yes." I dutifully continued with, "Why do you like it?" and she said, "Because I get to do math!" When Lukas finished Earlybird 2B several months ago, Katie took over his book, constantly asking me to do it with her. I finally got her her own book, Earlybird 1A, a few weeks ago, which was a bit silly, because she finished half of the book in about three sittings. Whatever.

Just to be silly, I then turned to Helen, nine months old, and said, "So, Helen, do you want to be homeschooled, too?" and Marie responded extremely emphatically, "Yes, definitely!" I was rather surprised, after her own rather wishy-washy response, and asked why she was so sure that Helen would like being homeschooled. Marie's response, "Because Helen has strong opinions." Very interesting. I asked then if one can't have strong opinions at school, and Marie got kind of quiet again and finally said, "Well, yes, but you can't do anything about them. You're sort of supposed to think the same things the other kids think, and like the same things and have the same things, and you're not really supposed to like math or like the teachers or anything like that." I asked her if she didn't have any strong opinions herself, and she said she does now, and wouldn't let people change them anyway, but that would be one reason she wouldn't want to go to school ALL the time, because it would be too exhausting keeping her own opinions.

Insightful, I thought, and rather more encouraging than the first conversation with Marie! Overall, my children like homeschooling. :-)

Just a quick list of what we've had since arriving in Cyprus January 14th this year:

January 15th--I broke a filling, had it replaced. Now I know a dentist who speaks very little English.

A week later--Jörn had a crown come off, had it glued back on. He went to a different dentist, who speaks very good English.

Middle of March--Lukas cut his thumb with a pocketknife, we opted not to bother with stiches, but he'll have a nice scar.

Later the same day--Jacob ran through a (closed) sliding glass door, one big cut on his knee, two more smaller ones on his leg, we opted not to bother with stiches, but he'll have a nice scar.

End of March--Jacob had an ear infection, now we know an English-speaking GP.

A week later--Katie had a fever and ear pain for two days, on Katie's second day of fever, Helen screamed for two hours, then had a fever in the night. Katie was fine, Helen had an ear infection, now we know an English-speaking pediatrician.

Two weeks ago--someone kicked a soccer ball into the side of our car, denting the front fender so that the driver's door wouldn't open. A neighbor straightened it, we haven't done anything else about it.

A week and a half ago--I let chapped lips get out of control and had a hugely swollen and infected lip that spread to lymph nodes, but it got better after about four days. The pharmacist is getting to know us quite well.

Last week--Jacob dropped something in the bathroom sink and it (the sink/washbasin) broke. It was replaced yesterday. Now we know a nice English-speaking plumber.

Last night--Katie was running down the hall and tripped and fell. She has a swollen gum, a loose tooth, and a fat lip.

This afternoon--Lukas was climbing up the side of the veranda and he and the concrete slab on top of the brick planters that make up the walls of the veranda crashed to the concrete ground. Now we know where the hospital is and Lukas has had his first x-ray, but his ankle is thankfully only sprained, not broken. I'm supposed to keep a six-year-old boy still and with his foot up for five days.

Cost so far: 10 Euro deductible (excess) for Jörn's dentist, 50 Euros for replacing the sliding door, and that only because we forgot to ask for a receipt, we were so shocked at it being done within two hours.

 German health insurance and liability insurance rock!

Katie came to me very excited this morning, because she had found a toy frog and wants to take it to playgroup next week for a reverse-counting song we sing about frogs: "Five Little Speckled Frogs."

Five little speckled frogs sat on a speckled log,

Eating some most delicious grubs, yum yum!

One jumped into the pool where it was nice and cool,

So there were four green speckled frogs. Hum hum.

So she played with the frog for awhile, singing some  version or another of this song, but then decided the frog needed speckles, as it was only plain green. After a long family discussion about the frog's ownership, it was determined that it was Jacob's frog, but he never denies his little sister anything he can grant her, so he carefully speckled the frog with a permanent marker. Delighted, Katie continued to play and sing, and this was her latest version of the song, fitting the melody perfectly, with the text as near as I can remember it:

One little speckled frog sat on a lilypad

Eating some yummy yummy bugs, yum yum!

It jumped into the pond to go-o swimming,

And wa-as very, very dead. Oh no!

 

Her explanation was that as it landed on its back (she'd of course tossed it up in the air to land in the "pond"), it was dead like the cockroach we found in the shower this morning. Which reminded us that we'd found a dead cockoach in the shower this morning and hadn't done anything about it, so went to look at it to think some more about it, and discovered that it WASN'T dead, after all!! It was on its back, but wiggling its legs. We put a yogurt pot over it while we decide what to do next. Yuck.

When I played snail slalom the day before yesterday, I didn't wear socks with my sandals and got blisters on both big toes and on one heel. I feel like such a wimp. I would have liked to go down to the salt lake this morning to watch the sunrise, but I pretended that the fact that my favorite sling is in the laundry was the reason I didn't, not my limping.

So...this morning I actually set the alarm, for 4:55, and went up on the roof, instead. The sunrise is officially around 6:30 a.m., but it's light long before that, and the part I like best is watching it get light. I got Helen back to sleep and left her in bed with Papa and went up at 5:15, just in time. Because of the lights from the airport, the streetlamps, and the brightness of the moon, I'm not sure if there was any light from the sun or not yet--east didn't really look any different from any other direction. By 5:30, it was definitely dawning, and the streetlights went off at about 5:45. Despite the telephone lines and the buildings and the lack of mountains, I enjoyed it very much.

Having celebrated the Son-Rise by myself on the roof, I came back downstairs at about 6:15, in a much better mood than I'd been in yesterday, ready to continue celebrating the Resurrection with my family. I made Easter bread, using Greek yogurt instead of Quark, guessing at the amount of baking powder because my recipe said "a packet of baking powder", adding a lot more flour than the recipe said to get the right consistancy, and leaving it in the oven for about twice as long as the recipe said, and it still turned out fine! While it was in the oven I put eggs on to boil and went outside to take down laundry and completely forgot about the eggs. 10 of the 12 were cracked, but I dyed all of them anyway, and set the table with a miniature chocolate egg on each plate. Everyone liked the bread and the eggs and the children were glad that we had a treat after all, after we'd cancelled the egg-dying yesterday due to the enormous gap between parental expectations and children's behavior.

After breakfast the children even made butterflies and eggs with coffee filters, paper towels, and the left-over egg dye. I felt very domestic and organized. That does happen, once every couple of years or so, but it wears off quickly.

At 10:00 we went to the worship service of a church we've sort of kind of decided that we might mostly go to semi-regularly, and then afterwards went to a multi-lingual house church for lunch and fellowship (and learning Greek!), and didn't get home until nearly 6:00 p.m. And now it's 8:00 and I'd actually like to be getting the children ready for bed, but we didn't eat lunch until nearly 3:00 and haven't even had dinner yet, and now a friend is here playing Ligretto with the children, so I'm at the computer. I'm not sure what we're doing next Sunday, which is when the Greek Orthodox celebrate Easter.

Okay, the friend is going to continue playing Ligretto with the children, and Jörn (and Helen) and I are going to walk to the bakery ALL BY OURSELVES and buy bread! Yay!

I've been wanting to write a blog post with this title for a week! Several times since we moved into this house, I've managed to wake up and GET up before Katie did, and have gone for a walk down by the salt lake. Last week when I did that, there were snails EVERYWHERE. Not wanting to step on them (in all honesty, not so much because of caring about snails, but because of not wanting yucky squished snail on my sandals...), I spent most of the time watching carefully where I was walking, which involved a lot of back-and-forth, or slow motion swerving. Snail slalom. Almost all of the snails were crossing the path from south to north, except for in one short section where they were crossing north to south. Very weird.

I went for another walk the day before yesterday and played snail slalom again, but there weren't quite as many, so I got to enjoy the scenery a bit more. I also discovered that we're pretty much right in the middle of the four-kilometer-long path--it took me 21 minutes to walk to one end of it, and 23 minutes to walk to the other end. Since it's about half a kilometer down to the path, that's a five-kilometer walk if I go to one end only and back home. Not very far, but a first step towards my goal of running a marathon before I'm 58. I take Helen with me in the sling, so I can't jog even if I could jog, which I can't.

Language progress: I went to Greek-speaking playgroup again today, with a few more Greek-speakers this week! I was thrilled to pieces when I confused a new person because I said "Kalimera" (good morning) well enough that she thought I actually speak Greek, but then I had NO clue whatsoever what she next said to me. :-)

Moving progress: our crates arrived in Limassol last Friday and we were able to sign the customs papers here in Larnaca, and today they finally called to say that they're actually going to deliver our stuff to us TOMORROW! They'll call tomorrow to say what time. It's good that we're flexible. :-)

And a Katie-funny: as usual, she was in our bed far too early this morning, around 6:20, talking and singing and I-don't-know-what, as I was still trying to sleep. At 7:15 I got up and went to the bathroom. As I walked back into the bedroom, Katie was climbing out of bed and saying to my husband, "I'm going to Mommy." She had her back sort of to me, so I dashed around the bed and under the blanket on my husband's side--he saw me coming and held the blanket up, then pulled it over my head quickly. I don't know HOW Katie missed seeing me, but she did, and went out of the room. She came back, leaned on me (through the blanket) to talk to Papa, asking where Mommy is. I managed not to giggle out loud, but was shaking holding the laughter in. She said, "What's that?!" and pulled the blanket back and saw me. Then she said, "Oh, Mommy! There you are! I thought it was a octo-plus!"

Maybe you had to be there, but Jörn, Lukas (who had joined the bed while I was out of the room), and I all just totally lost it, and since Helen loves it when people laugh, she also laughed hysterically. It was a nice start to the day, although I'm still not entirely sure if I ought to be insulted that my daughter thought I was "a octo-plus."

We went to the Greek-speaking playgroup again today, which was nice, but there isn't really a lot of Greek spoken there! The leader is English, married to a Cypriot, and she was taking care of a little boy who speaks Kurdish, but no Greek. Another mother is English-Cypriot and also goes to the playgroup on Tuesday (in English), so she of course also speaks English. One other English-Cypriot mother was there, but she's very, very quiet--and in any case, also speaks English. And one other mother is from the U.S. Then today there was a new mother there, and I was quite hopeful, especially when I discovered that she didn't speak English...but then I discovered that she didn't speak Greek, either, but Turkish. And an older lady who helps out is Armenian. That was the whole group today. Lots of very nice, friendly chatting, but virtually all in English.

I did take our Greek-English picture dictionary with me today, though, and got help in pronouncing most of the words starting with alpha, I'll maybe even remember a few of them. And I learned how to say "Helen is happy," which is a somewhat useful phrase, since she is happy most of the time. :-) (We had a few bad teething nights in a row this weekend, though...last night was the first good one in awhile, and sleep is SO nice!)

The best part is the singing. A Cypriot lady comes in to sing with the children, and she speaks Greek with them, too, in between and about the songs. It was encouraging to recognize several more words this week than last, and to be able to sing along on a few of the easier, repeating lines.

My six-year-old found out a few days ago that the upstairs neighbors have the DVD of "Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang", and all the children have been asking me to let them borrow it, and I kept saying "maybe..." This morning Lukas bounced into my room and the first thing he asked was when he could borrow Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. In exasperation, I said, "When you've finished your math book!" In less than five minutes, no joke, he had completed the last six pages of his math book, gotten dressed, and was out the door. So we watched a movie today. We'd all seen it before, but my husband and I especially enjoyed all the extra bits that DVD's have--interview with Dick Van Dyke, how the movie was made, etc.

Then this evening Lukas was bored and asked me what he should do, so I suggested starting his new math book. He got very excited--and did the first six lessons.

Since I date the children's written work (although I do usually eventually throw away workbooks), I could look back and see exactly how long it took Lukas to complete Earlybird Mathematics 2B: just over four months. However, I also counted how many DAYS he actually did something: only 20. We haven't exactly been consistant about math with him! Now that he's in Primary Mathematics 1A, maybe I'll do better at remembering that he's "officially" a first-grader. :-)

It's been almost three weeks since I last posted, and everything is pretty much the same. We're enjoying the fruit, I'm enjoying the Greek yogurt, none of like any of the sweet stuff we've tried yet, it's been raining a lot (apparently more than it has for several years--makes us feel right at home!), I've started going to a Greek-speaking playgroup with Katie and Helen, I haven't gotten lost for a couple of weeks now...what else is there to report?

The one exciting piece of news is that we have found a house! We signed the rental agreement last week, have met with the owner's representative several times to negotiate what needs to be done in the house, and will hopefully get the keys next week. However, we can't really move in until our shipment from Germany comes, which is difficult to plan. Good news in that, though--our shipment finally did leave Germany on Tuesday, February 17th, a mere seven weeks after they picked it up. Now that it is actually on a ship and moving, the target date of February 28th shouldn't be too far off from reality.

Homeschooling-wise, I haven't been keeping any records for the last two months, but last night I sat down and wrote down everything "officially academic" that we had done, and I was quite surprised: I didn't think that even a whole week's worth had been accomplished, but Marie and Jacob had actually done three to four weeks' worth of Sonlight and an impressive amount of German and math, too for not having had anything at all organized. However, we haven't done science nor Spanish a single time, and Lukas hasn't done a whole lot of anything.

All have done plenty of learning, though! Sorting, packing, cleaning, spending time with friends, and finally saying goodbye took up the end of December and first half of January, and since arriving here, new experiences, new social contacts (I lived in Germany too long to use the word "friend" carelessly, but I do see a lot of potential!), looking at houses, learning about blunt-nosed vipers, playing in the Mediterranean, exploring side-streets and parks, different playgrounds, seeing lemons and blossoms on the same tree, picking oranges from the tree in the garden of the house we'll be moving into. And spending a lot of time together, which has been stressful at times, but in the last week I've been encouraged by some of the new cooperation I'm seeing among the children!

But now I need to get dressed and get the day going.

We bought a car today, or rather, signed that we're buying it, but won't have the actual car until the money has been transferred from Germany. (We hope that's what we signed--almost everything here is in Greek AND English, but the piece of paper that we signed today was only in Greek!!) Yesterday we tried to open a bank account here, but we can't do that until we have an address. And we can't establish residency until we have a bank account. I'm a little curious as to how we're going to pay the deposit and first month's rent without a bank account, but I suppose we can transfer that directly as we're doing for the car. Oh, and my European husband and children will have no problem with residency here, of course, but we may have to leave a deposit of something like 800 Euros for me, since I'm not European. I suppose it's because I might have only married a German (14 years ago) and had five children just so I could sneak into Cyprus, leave my husband, and become a financial drain on the Cypriot government...

And I think we've decided on a house. I lost track of how many we saw all together, but we've narrowed it down to two. Actually, if it were up to only Jacob and me, we'd have it narrowed down to one, if only up to my husband, narrowed down to the other one, and Marie can't decide. Lukas, Katie, and Helen don't have much of an opinion. We were supposed to have definitely decided yes or no on the one that I want by this evening, but didn't call yet, so we'll call tomorrow. Today, that is, as it's already past midnight.

Since Sue said I don't have to make her anonymous, hi Sue, and thank you so much for the hug this afternoon--that was SO needed! And I'm clueless about Firefox, Internet Explorer, and the ability to make comments. Nor did I know what RSS was until you told me, but at least I did figure out how to do whatever it was I did that helped......

As for the Greek, your computer may be showing you Greek on your screen, and other people may be seeing it, but for three in Greek, what I'm seeing in your comment is o with a hat, n with a tilde, and e and a with accents! I'd be very curious to know what other people see!

And to Tina: my other blog has all the details on our fight to homeschool in Germany, but the short version of answers to your questions: yes, I'm from the U.S., but no, we didn't exactly "have" to leave Germany, and homeschooling didn't actually end up being the reason we did, although it was the first reason we started looking about four years ago for ways to leave Germany. We're in Cyprus with YWAM.

By the way, when anyone leaves a comment on my other blog, I get an e-mail telling me that a comment has been left. However, I don't for comments left on this blog! It can't be that hard to figure out, but I'm not managing it--anyone want to clue me in?

I'm at the computer so late because the light bulb of the reading light on my side of the bed burned out. I don't know how to go to bed without reading first, so I'd better get a new light bulb tomorrow. I mean, today.

I'm reading a book called "Homeschooling: A Patchwork of Days" by Nancy Lande, a collection of  "a day in the life" stories written by 30 different homeschooling families. There are a couple along the lines of "We rose at 5:00 a.m. and had individual devotions and morning exercises and practiced Chinese and cared for the animals before family breakfast cooked by the six-year-old and devotions lead by Dad at 6:15, before which all the children had gotten dressed and made their beds" etc., but most of them were more in the realm of something that I could imagine, and a few were even more in the realm of our reality. I found myself observing us at some points today as if I were writing one of those chapters:

"Around 10:00 we finished cleaning up after breakfast and I went upstairs to borrow some DVDs, as we'd bribed the children with watching a DVD in return for decent behaviour at the Christian Unity Service last night. As we've never had a television and own one 23-minute DVD that we were given for Christmas last year, this was a huge treat and a great motivator. After watching the first episode of "Little House on the Prarie" and working through the children's angry reactions to Pa not having a beard and Reverand Alden claiming that one is saved by attending church, I then read a few things to the children before lunch, after which the two older ones did some math..." etc.

Of course, I could include or leave out things such as reading the same verse out loud about six times before Jacob could answer who went where: the sentence being something like "Paul entered the synagogue" and Jacob couldn't tell me who or where, because he was playing with Helen, playing with a pillow, complaining that Katie was too loud, complaining that he'd rather read Garfield, asking when lunch would be, etc. Or the "did some math" in the afternoon would be more like, "As I took Katie off of the coffee table upstairs AGAIN and tried to chat with S., Jacob said "two and one-tenth", so I checked and said, "Nope, and Lukas, stop being so wild with the cat!" then asked Marie if she needed help, and if not, please go back downstairs and check on Helen, who was asleep, and keep doing math, repeated at Jacob's insistance that 2.05 is 2 1/10 that zero-point-zero-five is NOT one-tenth, took Katie off of the coffee table again, told Lukas to be gentle with the cat, took Helen from Jacob who had just brought her upstairs and asked him if he'd figured out zero-point-zero-five yet to which he stared at me as if I were from another planet and said "It's not zero-point-zero-five, it's TWO and one-twentieth!"..."

Knowing that the above paragraph is accurate, as is the sentence "I read the Bible and history to the children before lunch and they did math after lunch", I of course really wonder what each of the sample days in this book REALLY looked like! (Please, I do hope that some of them were a little closer to ours!)

And despite being fairly anti-television, I suspect that the most valuable "educational" thing we did today was have a LOT of discussion about the Little House on the Prairie episode.

Oh, and Lukas did have another piano lesson today, this time with a book lent to us by S., who lives upstairs and to whom this apartment belongs. :-)

Katie is looking through Lukas's German book and saying "m-m-monkey", "r-r-rabbit", "d-d-dog", etc. which sounds nice and advanced and as if she were learning to read, but as I said, this is his GERMAN book, so so far not one word that she has pretended to read actually even started with the same letter in German as it does in English. Okay, now Lukas read a few words to her (in German), so now she's doing it bilingually: "fl-fl-flower, Bl-Bl-Blume, pl-pl-plate, T-T-Teller."  Katie, by the way, did not approve of us trying to get her to say that she's three in Greek today--she kept saying, "No, I'm trés!" I would still really, really like for my children to learn Spanish, but I think that Spanish is going to have to take a back-seat for awhile, so she'll eventually learn to say that she's "tria" and I might eventually learn how to get Greek letters on my keyboard. (Not that I know how to spell "tria" in Greek anyway, nor, for that matter, what the official transliteration might be in English.)

After 12 days in Cyprus I'd hoped to have a few phrases of Greek, but it's not going very well. The real estate agent who drove us around to several places today was very nice and the first Cypriot to be willing to try to teach me some Greek, so I can now count to five, say that I have five children, pronounce corner store as well as "Pepsi" halfway-correctly (pi is not "pie", it's more like "bee", except that the consonant sound is something in between English "p" and "b"), and almost say "car". She was very patient with me as I read signs as we were driving around, correcting my pronounciation and translating, but I'm afraid that I don't remember much except for what I just listed, and where the accent on "pharmacy" falls...

No, we haven't found a house or apartment yet. We would like the house we saw on Saturday, in the location of the apartment we saw today, with the garden of the first house we saw today, and with the rent of the one on the other side of town...

I was asked what we did with our car and apartment in Germany: the car we sold back to the dealer (we'd bought it just over two years ago, about a year old at the time, but we'd driven as many kilometers as would be normal for a car at least twice it's age, so nobody else was willing to buy it...), the apartment is still on the market and has been since September. The very first people to even look at it were scheduled to come the day after we left Germany, and since we haven't heard anything from the real estate agent, we take it that they weren't interested.

The rest of what I just wrote got rather too long, so I took it out and will post it separately...