Sorry everyone! I should have known I would't be good at posting here regularly, but I have good excuses, I swear! So I suppose you all would like to know a bit more about the car saga. Well, thankfully, there was not much more to the saga. We went to register and pay road taxes for the car and drove around a bit aimlessly for a while before finding the building. But to our defense, it had a tiny sign that was, as expected, in Greek. And we expected a large building with a large parking lot (it's the motor vehicle dept., there should be lots of cars, right?), but it was instead, a small building and no parking lot. Thankfully there was not much of a line and we paid for some stuff. Not exactly sure what we paid for, but the title in in our name and we have 2 very official looking pieces of paper with expiration dates of Dec 2009 and Jan 2011. So I think we're set. We did have to take the car into the shop as a hose from the radiator was leaking...but not a big deal. So the little tiny field car is in service!
Cute right? Almost looks like my first car, a Honda Prelude. And I swear I'm not driving down any roads that are not suitable for a car with such a low under carriage. How I miss my Nissan at times. Sniff.
Moving on. Let's see what has happened. There was an entire week of rain and some horrible flooding near Nicosia. This happened Oct 27 - Nov 4. And it has just started to rain now again. Hopefully it won't rain tomorrow during field work! I've been pretty lucky so far. Oh wait, it's stopped! Just like the AZ. I took a day off in the middle of the week (okay, so it was a public holiday anyhow) and went to some archaeological sites (Salamis and Enkomi) in the north with a girl (Helen) working here for 3 weeks from England. I've posted the pictures here (sorry, haven't figured out how to do a slide show yet or how to label the pictures):
I've also updated the following album : Cyprus 2009. I promise I'll work on learning how to use the photo capabilities of this blog site to simplify things.
So I've mainly been trying to get some field work done before the rains decide they are more or less here for the winter. I'll have more field work for the spring, but this part is for some stuff I've been working on (with Pat and Mari...one of Pat's students) since last summer, as well as for a paper on agricultural abandonment and revegetation. It's kind of rough to do this on your own, most of the time these types of surveys are done in groups of at least 2, but it has worked out so far. I've only had one kind of bad day where I could not stay on my feet for the life of me! I ended up with bruises on each of my hips, scrapes on my arms and palms, and 2 holes in my pants. I thought there was only one hole, along the hip (where I ended up with one of my bruises and a scrape) and thought I could sew it back up. When I got in, I realized that there was also a hole in the ass of the pants. Good thing I work in the middle of nowhere for the most part and didn't make any stops on my way home! I think my t-shirt would have covered the hole, but I already get enough strange looks, this would have been very funny for the Cypriots. So the field pants made their way to the trash bin.
I then spent a week in Paphos (on the southwestern coast). I had to visit some field sites in villages that were closer to Paphos than Nicosia and I didn't feel like driving across the island every day. This worked out nicely. A few funny occurrences. When I was out one day I kept thinking that it would be funny if someone had my car towed or called in the plates. But then I dismissed this thought as people park anywhere they want in Cyprus (even on the sidewalks), so parking along the edge of a road next to a field shouldn't be odd. On my way back to my hotel, I received 2 phone calls but couldn't answer the phone while driving (trying to figure out where to go plus I couldn't reach my phone). Once I got back to the hotel, there was another call, so I answer of course, from a police officer wondering where the car had been 2 hours prior, where it was now, and so on. I asked him why he was calling and he told me that the car was seen in the vicinity of a robbery at a coffee shop. I'm thinking that either he told me the wrong time (as my car was parked at that time) or someone did call in the plates to their friend/cousin/uncle at the police station. When he found out that I'm basically a tourist he quickly let me off the phone.
I also believe that I saw a mouflon while driving around one day. This is a large sheep, similar to a bighorn. You'd think I'd be sure, considering this is the only large mammal on Cyprus, but all I saw was a flash of white as it ran around the corner. So I'm going to assume that this is what I saw. And I didn't imagine anything. And yes, they are real.
I guess the only other big news is that I'm headed to London Nov. 25-29. I'll meet up with Helen (previously mentioned) for a beer and some sightseeing. I'm going to spend the nights of the 25 and 26 with Janice from SECOR/Stantec days. She's working just north of London for a bit, so we're going to catch up and eat too much pub food for Thanksgiving. Hmmm, what else may be of interest? Oh yeah, it's not always apparent where one should or should not drive. Yesterday I was going down a village road when it got really narrow, but I couldn't back up so I had to creep along until I came to two poles, sunk in concrete, that block my exit from the tiny street onto a normal street. There were cars parked alongside the road junction in a makeshift lot, so I couldn't just drive through this "lot" around the poles. So I get out and kind of pretend like I parked the car there on purpose and the other people had blocked me in. The whole time wondering what the eff I was going to do. But I walked around a bit, nervously as I didn't need the police calling again, and came back to the car hoping that one of the other cars had moved. But no. So I look at the space between the cars and decide that maybe, just maybe, there is enough space for me to squeeze through. But it would be tricky as the "road" I was on kind of dropped off to the dirt lot and was beside a pretty steep hill. So I could get high centered, hit another car, drive off the hill, or sit there. Amazingly I squeezed through the cars, my heart was pounding. I so wish I had the nerve to get photos! But I just wanted to get out of the village before someone did....I don't know what exactly. Lame. Only me.
I also believe that I saw a mouflon while driving around one day. This is a large sheep, similar to a bighorn. You'd think I'd be sure, considering this is the only large mammal on Cyprus, but all I saw was a flash of white as it ran around the corner. So I'm going to assume that this is what I saw. And I didn't imagine anything. And yes, they are real.
I guess the only other big news is that I'm headed to London Nov. 25-29. I'll meet up with Helen (previously mentioned) for a beer and some sightseeing. I'm going to spend the nights of the 25 and 26 with Janice from SECOR/Stantec days. She's working just north of London for a bit, so we're going to catch up and eat too much pub food for Thanksgiving. Hmmm, what else may be of interest? Oh yeah, it's not always apparent where one should or should not drive. Yesterday I was going down a village road when it got really narrow, but I couldn't back up so I had to creep along until I came to two poles, sunk in concrete, that block my exit from the tiny street onto a normal street. There were cars parked alongside the road junction in a makeshift lot, so I couldn't just drive through this "lot" around the poles. So I get out and kind of pretend like I parked the car there on purpose and the other people had blocked me in. The whole time wondering what the eff I was going to do. But I walked around a bit, nervously as I didn't need the police calling again, and came back to the car hoping that one of the other cars had moved. But no. So I look at the space between the cars and decide that maybe, just maybe, there is enough space for me to squeeze through. But it would be tricky as the "road" I was on kind of dropped off to the dirt lot and was beside a pretty steep hill. So I could get high centered, hit another car, drive off the hill, or sit there. Amazingly I squeezed through the cars, my heart was pounding. I so wish I had the nerve to get photos! But I just wanted to get out of the village before someone did....I don't know what exactly. Lame. Only me.
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