I can hardly believe I used to say to all of my friends back home, “Hello from sunny Cyprus!” Since I arrived in late summer, when the weather was a predictable 100-plus degrees and sunny every day, the weather has turned cool, rainy, and blustery, or very windy, with splashes of sunshine in between. Thunderstorms crash above me at night, but then the sun will come out to say, “Γεια σου!” (“Hello!”) for a bit in the morning before disappearing behind the clouds again, only to reappear an hour or two later. It’s as if the suddenly-shy sun is now playing peek-a-boo! The locals, called Cypriots, keep talking about how unusually cold and rainy it is now, even for winter here. One joked that I must have brought the cold weather with me from the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, where I used to live. And perhaps they’re right!
