Yassas from Nicosia, Cyprus! Tomorrow will mark two weeks since I left the States and arrived in Cyprus. To say that Cyprus is beautiful is an understatement. Once I settled in, exploring the city and campus was easy. I was also able to find my sit spot for the semester. It wasn’t easy picking a single place, but I eventually decided on a spot right in the middle of campus that’s surrounded by different kinds of trees and plants. For this journal entry I focused on a Weeping Bottlebrush tree, which I had never seen before. Although I am no artist, I included a rough sketch of it, accompanied by some rain droplets with blue ink because it started raining. Weeping bottlebrush are not native to Cyprus, but because of the warm climate, it is able to thrive all year long. Cyprus also prides themselves in being the sunniest country in Europe, enjoying 320 days of sun annually. It is still technically winter here but the temperature hardly falls below 40 degrees fahrenheit. Cyprus is also known for it’s citrus. I pass multiple orange and lemon trees on my way to class everyday and even though they aren’t ready for consumption, they are beautiful and I enjoy looking at them.

I also wanted to include a brief word about recent events that affected Cyprus, but mostly Turkey and Syria. As many of you may know by now, multiple Mediterranean countries experienced two severe earthquakes earlier this week. The night before our first day of classes, we felt the first earthquake. Although a level 7 in Turkey, Cyprus was lucky enough to only feel a level 4 quake. Everyone was safe and we were able to continue classes as planned. However, this was not the case for the people of Turkey and Syria. It was devastating to hear the news the next morning and we are all keeping them in our thoughts and prayers.