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Can I just say, the Mediterranean people know how to eat! I’ve eaten some of the best foods in the past few days, it’s unreal. Global semesters abroad even arranged a cooking class for us to learn how to prepare some traditional Cypriot food on our own. Chef Charis Heracleous, who has worked at some of the best restaurants in Boston and now has his own cooking show in Cyprus, gave us endless recipes and served stuffed cheese ravioli, traditional meat balls (nothing like Italian meatballs) and pita with grilled halloumi cheese and fresh tomato. In theory, I’m prepared to make any of these dishes. Halloumi cheese is by far my favorite and it is a staple in Cypriot cuisine.




It’s neither a soft or hard cheese, but somewhere in the middle. You can bake it, grill it, cook with it, or eat it straight out of the package. However, it’s trouble! Heracleous warned us students have gained 20-30 pounds in ONE semester from this cheese! Lucky for me, my roommate runs track for her college back at home and we’ve already been running together and I plan to take Pilates, as well as regularly attend the gym to hopefully avoid that situation! HA!
Last night we had our welcoming dinner at a beautiful Greek restaurant where we ate out in the patio in perfect weather. Dinner time around here is between 9pm-11pm, coffee from 11pm-12am, clubs 12 until late, late into the morning. Something that has been an interesting change after being told in the US to not eat late and getting kicked out of bars at 2am.

Speaking of which, a group of us (including a girl from Capital Hill in Seattle, working at the Seahawks main bar just outside of Seahawk stadium… small word!) went over to a sports bar not 5 minutes from our apartments to watch the Seahawks game Sunday night/Monday morning. I couldn’t believe I could watch the game over here, but I guess when you got so many Americans buying drink after drink, anything is possible! It’s funny because they have multiple tv stations but each one owns different rights to different sporting events, so if you buy one package you only get certain sports/games. However, if you’re like this kind, older, very traditionally Cypriot bar owner you somehow can get anything you could ever want to watch with some crazy secret satellites. It was funny to hear our advisors talk about this guy because they honestly don’t know how he does it, but sure enough Americans have even watched the superbowl there. It’s a great little set up too, he put our game on outside in a side patio with a huge projector screen. We played pool and darts and really enjoyed the night out.

Other than that, I’ve been really enjoying my time here. Everyone has been great, the staff, the students, etc. Our days have been full of history classes, art history classes, and various lectures to get us acclimatized to living here and ready for our upcoming travels. Thursday as 5:30am I’m leaving home to start my 10 day international travel.