Dear ECS,
Greetings honey, you have just fallen asleep after we are back home from Thanksgiving in Cyprus. We are quite confident that you have had a wonderful time in Cyprus as your preferred mode of movement has been skipping, a visually endearing perfect manifestation of your happiness expressed in movement. It is a shorthand to know if you are happy, as skipping only comes out when you are feeling joy. And in Cyprus you skipped to the beach, to the restaurant, to the fort, to the gelato spot, to everywhere.
Why did we go to Cyprus? Great question, and the answer is pretty simple - because it is close, intriguing and new. Perhaps even simpler, because it is there to explore and we don’t know what it is like. Your mom and I have really loved these attributes in our travels, especially as you have blessed our family with your light and energy and joy.
Going to places -- that we would in all probability never go to if we lived in the US-- is one of my favorite parts of life overseas. Since now, or in the recent past, we are most of the way to Cyprus, or to the myriad of cool destinations in Egypt, to the Ethiopian highlands and rock churches, to the Seychelles, to the Kenyan coast and to the Cayman Islands, why not go see what they are like? And we have.
Cyprus is a little bit like the Bahamas in that it receives several orders of magnitude more visitors than it has residents. This leads to an economy that is heavily dependent on tourism, which can be challenging, but it also tends to lead to a good experience as a visitor. The infrastructure and ethos are sort of set up for you to have a good time and for the place to be accessible, at least superficially.
So what did we get up to in Cyprus, which we loved? Well it was Thanksgiving, and we have much to be thankful for this year with our move to a new country, the dozens of loved ones we saw as we jetted around the U.S. this summer, the weddings we have been to for our family and friends, our gorgeous new apartment, you thriving in French school, me doing well in Arabic and mommy continuing to love her job. Yes, so much to be thankful for this year.
In the tradition of the holiday, we had a few feasts of bounty and plenty. In aligning with the specialty of Cyprus, these feasts were seafood for your parents, and tended towards pasta and ice cream for you. So, everyone was very happy. Almost next door to our rental apartment, there was this ridiculous seafood taverna, Psarolimano, that we ate at a couple of times, which your mom dubbed “Cyprus Street and Co,” an homage to my favorite restaurant in the world located in Portland, Maine. One I have been going to for decades, so high praise indeed.
Beyond the holiday-appropriate feasting on the bounty of local seafood, we had a lot of wonderful whole family time on the beach, eating ice cream and biking along the boardwalk. One highlight was exploring Laranca Castle, a fort built to defend the port and coast more than 600 years ago. As the city changed hands between various world powers over the intervening centuries, it has gone though cyclical periods of decay and renewal, being important for trade and then falling off as the trade winds shifted, only to rise again. This cycle has taken place at least three times, and I was moved by both history repeating itself and the human bent towards improving and renewal, two traits I try to live, and to instill in your impressionable psyche.
Your mom and I also got to go on a number of epic trail runs along a large salt lake with flamingos and millenniums of history. I loved these runs, for the brisk, clean air and expansive vistas. Salt lakes always have the most amazing reflections, which must be tied to the salt content of the water somehow, and this visual trick was enhanced by the flamingos that call the salt lake home for the winter. Hundreds of the majestic birds dotted the lake, gorging on the pink salt shrimp that give them their distinctive color. Running on the trails and dirt roads around the lake reminded me of several places we have traveled and/or lived, such as Northern California and southern Australia. I love that connection of places thousands of miles apart, that they can be visually or cultural similar despite vastly different human and geologic histories.
And now we are back home, in our apartment and at our schools/jobs. This is good too, not as special as exploring new places and finding them more charming and enjoyable than we ever would have hoped. But special all the same and comfortable in a way the belies our relatively short time in this new city and country.
Much love to our loved ones around the world - a very happy Thanksgiving and on to a hopefully wonderful holiday season.
love,
dad
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