Happy Day After Thanksgiving
Hello everyone. We hope you enjoyed stuffing your faces with turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and all the other seasonal fare. We didn't have a traditional Thanksgiving meal (funny how that works when you're outside the one country that celebrates Thanksgiving), but we did go to TGI Friday's for a big American-style burger, and my mom sent us some ingredients to make our own sweet potato casserole and pumpkin pie, so we're planning to enjoy that at some point this weekend.
We're sorry for the delay in putting up pictures from our weekend away awhile back. We spent a couple days in a small, quaint mountain village called Kakopetria and had a wonderfully relaxing time. We took long walks, read a lot, ate out, and generally de-stressed. Below you'll find some snapshots of the scenery.
Last weekend we went out to a very nice Asian/Polynesian restaurant called Pago-Pago to celebrate our five month anniversary. The food and service were some of the best we've found in Nicosia. We had dumplings, satay, curry, tropical fruits.. it was amazing. We highly recommend that you check it out if you're in the area. ;-)
We're quickly approaching the Christmas season and are going to be increasingly busy with youth group events. We're in charge of the church Christmas dinner, which serves as a fundraiser for the youth group, we're taking the kids Christmas caroling, and we're exploring the possibility of holding a winter retreat right after New Years' for our group and another youth group in town. Hopefully we'll manage to work in some rest and relaxation during the holidays as well.
We just wanted to take the opportunity at this special time of year to let you all know how very thankful we are for your love, prayers, and comments. We are truly blessed to be surrounded by a lot of caring, thoughtful, supportive people (along with a handful of equally-lovable crazies and delinquents). We love you all very much. Happy Thanksgiving.
–John
Chop Chop!!
So after many months of dragging a brush through my long uncontrollable mop, I finally got around to going to the hairdressers. It was one of those moments where I was on the verge of grabbing a pair of scissors and attacking the forest that was my hair. Fortunately, the appointment at the salon came first! I just said 'go for it!' which was actually very brave of me because cutting and styling curly hair is quite a laborious business and needs expert attention. It wasn't what I was expecting and needless to say I was pretty shocked, but after a day of playing with it and a big can of mousse, I finally decided I like it!
Of course, this is not the only thing that has been going on around here. We actually have had quite a few undesirable adventures! First of all, in the wee hours of the morning, our bed just decided to collapse on one side!! Not the thing you want to happen when you have to be up at 6am for work! But, after some serious glueing and nail hammering, we managed to put it back together...of course this was on the same day that the ghost of funky odour decided to visit our apartment! (what's that saying? - when it rains it pours) NO.... it was not John's feet! Trust me - I checked! We seemed to realise it was generating from the fridge so we took everything out, cleaned it thoroughly and went off to Friday night youth. By the time we got home, it had penetrated the whole apartment and we were baffled. We checked behind all the furniture in case something had gotten in the flat and died in the corner. BUT nothing, zip, nada! So, on Saturday morning we cleaned the fridge again and it was at this point that we realised the smell was generating from BEHIND the fridge...a mouse I hear you say...but alas! There was nothing there! In fact, it was THE ACTUAL FRIDGE itself. Something had defrosted and leaked into a draining pipe and gone stale. The electrician came round and pulled out the 'culprit' and there are no words to describe the smell that was exposed...it took us a while to get hungry for lunch!
One good thing that came out of all this? We were ecstatic to be renters because our landlady (who lives upstairs and is the sweetest woman) took care of it all. Yay for renting!
My mum and dad are in Israel this weekend..(yes we are jealous) and I have the day off on Monday (thank God for the Orthodox church and Archbishop day!) so we are going away for the weekend. Thank God again for friends and parents' good ideas - a friend of my parents owns a hotel in the mountains and he has let us stay for the weekend for free.(Also we are checking it out for a future Youth retreat.) We leave tomorrow around noon and get back Monday afternoon. Ahh, the thought of doing nothing for three days sounds marvelous. This is my first day off since school began and we only have one other day off from now until Christmas so I plan on taking full advantage of it.
Anyway, we'll be back in a couple days with some pictures of our vacation! Love you all.
–Leia
