Lol. Far from being fired, I actually got HIRED. I just think it's funny that I came all the way to Cyprus and got an internship. Who gets internships while there studying abroad? Tracy does.
I started to feel extremely restless about 3 weeks ago. Though Cyprus is a beautiful island, the laid back lifestyle was beginning to take a toll on my fast paced city girl emotions. In search of a cure for my mental distress, I visited the offices of Student Affairs and the Global Learning Semesters.
The Student Affairs office proved to be venue for a resolution to my problem. After meeting with the Director of Clubs and Campus Activities I signed up for the Wine Tasting Club, the Dance Club and the Volunteer Club. According to her, those are the top three to be in based on popularity among students and amount of scheduled events. My personal fave is the Wine Tasting club (DO NOT JUDGE!) because the Saturday after I (and the entire GLS program -_-) joined, we went on a wine tasting trip to visit the vineyards in the mountains. I'll tell you about that in another post.
The GLS office was also of superb assistance. I explained to my adviser, Thanos, that I was getting bored and had too much free time on my hands. He pointed at Andreas, another GLD employee, and told me that he had more than enough tasks to keep me occupied. Thanos was not lying. I am now an official Social and Marketing Officer of Kypros.com, which simply means I have to figure out how to encourage people to use the site and then get them to do it.
Kypros.com is the brain child of Andreas and the President of the GLS Cyprus headquarters. Similar to how Zagat works for the NYC restaurant industry, Kypros serves as a directory for businesses of all types in Cyprus. The major difference between the two sites is Kypros allows anyone to create a user account and begin adding content to the site. The duties of the Social Marketing Officer are essential to the success of the site because it relies so heavily on user contribution. I'm stoked about adding this to my resume! I spend 8hrs in the office Mon-Thurs and 6 hrs in the field on Fridays. Originally, it was supposed to be 10-12 hrs of office work for the week but Gillian (my roomie and the Assistant Content Manager) and I realized we wouldn't be able to add content to the site if most of our time was being spent at school/in the office. We negotiated with the boss and now we get field hrs and transportation money! Woop Woop!
Yesterday was our first day in the field and it definitely was not what Gilly or I expected btu it was still an interesting experience. In my heart of hearts... I take that back. In my stomach of stomachs, I wholeheartedly believed that my field work would involve going downtown and grabbing bites to eat at all the yummy restaurants! For the sake of my love handles it's probably a good thing that Andreas had us visit tourist sites and attractions but my stomach definitely let out a sigh of disappointment when he pulled out the map and started circling churches and monuments. All the sites were places I had visited previously on a tour during GLS orientation week but I didn't mind visiting them again if it meant salvation from a couch or an office chair.
We took a cab to Famagusta gate because it's smack dab in the middle of all the points we had to cover. There was construction equipment outside when we pulled up which ruined any chances of Gilly getting any good pictures but I reminded her that she had good pictures from the first visit. There are no signs, plaques or brochures outside explaining the historical significance of the gate but to the best of my knowledge the gate served as one of the entries into the city during the Byzantine era a gabillion years ago. For security purposes, it only opened at dawn and closed promptly at dusk. Those who arrived too late were forced to wait outside of the gate until it reopened in the morning.
Gilly put me on map duty because she feared looking like a corny American tourist. With no one to impress on this island, I had no issue navigating with the 2ftx2ft map but I warned her that my sense of direction is seasonal and it might not be working at this particular time of year. I did my best to channel my Kristopher Columbus abilities and told Gilly we should head due west in search of the Cypriot Statue of Liberty. Okay, I'm lying about the due west but it sounded cooler than to the right of the gate. We found the Aqueduct before we arrived at the statue. I was only able to recognize it because Andreas told us to look out for a series of archways, had he not said that I would have never noticed it. Not because I'm not good at finding things but Aqueducts typically have something to do with water and there was nothing even remotely moist about these archways. And once again, there were NO SIGNS. Not even one in Greek. Gilly took pictures anyway but I don't know what type of review either of us will be able to write on that attraction. The statue is across the street and a few feet ahead of the waterless Aqueduct and when we got there we saw other tourists taking pictures which made Gilly feel better. They offered to take pics of us posing with the statue which was nice. Unlike the first two monuments, the Statue of Liberty has a plaque but it was written entirely in Greek. All I can gather is that something happened between 1955-1959.
Next stop on the list of Old City must see's is the Archbishop's Palace. The street perpendicular to the Statue of Liberty leads straight to the Palace so I didn't have to call on Kristopher for help with that one. Again, there were no signs explaining the historical significance of the building but from the title I am almost certain that the Archbishop of Cyprus lives there. We walked into a courtyard adjacent to the courtyard and I immediately noticed a thick rope tied to a hook and hanging 20 feet from a bell tower. Typically, I am not a mischievous person but I can't tell you how bad I wanted to ring that bell and run! I tugged lightly but the yank it was going to take to actually make the bell ring would have caused too much drastic movement and I didn't want to get caught before I even finished hearing the "Bong." For fear of getting into massive trouble I decided to scope out the area instead and chanced upon the Museum of Folk Art. It looked interesting but there was a 7euro entry fee and that was not in the budget for the day. Gillian chose not to violate the no photography rule and there were no brochures so if you ever make it in there please feel free to tell me what you saw! It's not over for me and the bell, though. I plan on finding out what it means when the bell sounds and then if it doesn't mean anything too drastic it then I promise to ring it before I leave. Overly cautious thug life, sue me.
My inner Kristopher was napping so I asked a local for directions to Agnos Antonios Church. The language barrier made the directions choppy but after stumbling to the right for a bit, we found the church. There were a bunch of cute old ladies inside tidying up which means we missed Good Friday Service. I tried to express my disappointment to the women but my limited Greek vocabulary paired with their non-existent knowledge of English made it impossible. There was a counter at the front of the church filled with brochures, I took a few in hopes that Andreas could translate for me. When we got back to the office I found out that my efforts were futile because the brochure ended up being about Women's Health Awareness. We stopped on a side street to find out next destination and I discovered that the Omeriyeh Mosque and the Ethnological museum were close by. The Ethnological museum is SUPER non-descript and we actually walked past it on the way to the church. Gilly took pictures outside but the building was closed so I can't show you any of the contents. Hope the picture is worth a thousand words!
The Omeriye Mosque was the most interesting place I visited. We arrived shortly after one of the evening prayers so there were several clusters of men in the courtyard. Gillian wanted to take pictures and leave but I was determined to go inside. After reading Malcolm X's biography I am very interested in the teachings of Allah and the practices of the Muslim world. No intentions of converting, just curious as to how they worship. I told Gilly she could wait outside but she gave in and headed to the entrance with me. There were mats extending from the door into the courtyard with a few pairs of shoes on them. When we got close enough to the mats, I asked one of the many men if we could go inside. I anticipated a yes but I just wanted to be certain because there really were no women in the courtyard with us. As i suspected, the man said it was fine and we took off our shoes and entered the interior. Inside was like a big carpeted living room with no furniture and there were four more men inside. Three were talking and one was still praying. Gillian and I walked all the way in and started reading the plaques on the wall. I heard footsteps approaching us pretty quickly and I looked over my shoulder to see who was coming. A man was running towards us holding two large pieces of fabric in his arms. I couldn't discern what the garments were but I assumed it was some sort of head covering because Gillian and I both had on pants and our arms/cleavage were covered. I told him Shukran and then immediately attempted wrap the fabric around my head. Why I didn't take the time to open up the garment and look at it, I don't know but boy was I embarrassed when I finished my wrap and looked up to see Gillian with her arms in a sleeved robe. It was awful. I was silently dying of laughter because of how foolish I looked and I couldn't unwrap myself fast enough to avoid the stares of the few people within the mosque. We made a mad dash to the door after that because we were laughing too hard and wanted to avoid disturbing the people who were still worshiping. That was ALMOST as bad as when a brown skinned maintenance man came to my apartment in Cyprus and I said "Hola!" Not even going to go into detail about my reasoning because I don't want to be seen as politically incorrect but you definitely get the drift. Those are my two stereotypical American moments, don't judge. It happens to the best of us.
After the mosque we walked past Famagusta Gate again on our way up to the remaining Churchs and I noticed a very small door in wall and two people were posted outside smoking. I told Gilly that the door was probably open and she didn't believe me so I went over to find out for myself. Sure enough the door was open and inside of the gate is a beautiful art gallery! I was so surprised because I didn't know there were any rooms within the gate. I googled it and it says that the passageway served as workshops and stores during ancient times. Now the rooms have been restored and the South Hall (where I was) is used for art exhibits and presentations. There had been a presentation by the European Union bank earlier that day and I tried to ask the man at the front desk a few questions about it but he didn't speak any English.
After this we went to two more church's before we made our way back to the GLS headquarters. Andreas was pleased with out progress and he reimbursed for our cab fare.
>>>FAST FORWARD>>>
At GLS's graduation ceremony, Gillian Rowley, Kayla Mark and I were awarded for being top contributors to Kypros. We won 25 euros towards dinner at a traditional Greek restaurant called Plaka Tavern not too far from our apartment. You pay 20 euro per person and the waiter brings 5 courses of food out. It is imperative that you eat with moderation because the yummy treat you gobble down in course 2 might hinder you from sampling the next treat in course 4. We were so stuffed after dinner that we walked back to the apartment after dinner to burn off all the calories.
So yeah, getting an internship abroad wasn't such a bad idea after all!
So yeah, getting an internship abroad wasn't such a bad idea after all!
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