Cyprus!

So after over 24 hours, all 27 of us (my numbers were a bit wrong earlier) made it to Cyprus. We got delayed sitting in the airplane at Dulles airport just outside DC for a solid 2 hours. We had exactly 2 hours from our original estimated arrival time in London until our connecting flight to Cyprus. Which we obviously missed. Thankfully, we were able to get all of our group onto the next flight out of the London Heathrow airport on a Cyprus Airways flight to Larnaca, the major international airport in Cyprus. Of course, one of the flight attendants on the Cyprus Airways flight was our professor's brother-in-law.

Over 24 hours of airplane air, airplane food, airplane seats, airport seats and airport food made all of us a bit delirious but we all remained in pretty good spirits for the elongated trip.  We all made it sore and tired to Cyprus where we took about a 45 minute bus ride into the capital, Nicosia. Over the hills of Nicosia, which is a divided city, you can see a light up flag of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (our first sighting in the darkness of night of anything about the conflict). We checked into our hotel which is really nice and in the Old City that is surrounded by Venetian walls then most of the group headed out to dinner around 11:30pm. Its now 2:35am, I've just showered and I cannot wait to go to bed.

Tomorrow we'll be attended the parade and festivities celebrating a Greece Independence holiday and talking to students about our research and other things.

Paripatetic Life

Today is the day that I leave with my 27 classmates and 1 awesome professor for 3 weeks in the Mediterranean.

I am traveling tonight on a red-eye flight to London's Heathrow airport then onto Larnaca, Cyprus! I'll be in Cyprus for about 10 days, then head to Athens, Greece for about 6 days and then finish up the trip with about 6 more days in Istanbul.

In total, this 21 day trip will have us meeting with at least 56 speakers who will tell us about themselves and where they fit into "The Cyprus Issue". (which I realize I still haven't talked about in here, oops).

As I've gotten a few phone calls expressing concern over where I'm headed to and the fact that I'm going to learn about a conflict in the conflict zone, let me assuage your fears. Cyprus has been a divided island since 1974. The UN Buffer Zone, or Green Zone, divides the island in half; the north is administered by the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a country recognized by just one other country (Turkey), the south is administered by the Republic of Cyprus and is internationally recognized as the sovereign government of the island. The north identified as the Turkish Cypriot community and the south as the Greek Cypriot community. There are some on the island who identify solely as Cypriot, Greek or Turkish, and many foreign nationals as well. While the UN Buffer zone has been monitored by a UN peacekeeping force since it was created in 1974, there has been little, if any, violence at the border.

About the current situation in the Middle East and North Africa: Cyprus is home to British military bases which may be utilized during the current strikes on Libya even though the Cypriot government has expressed that they do not wish for the British to use these bases for this purpose.


I'll try to update this as much as possible during the trip!

T minus 14 days!

My trip to Cyprus is so soon! I'm so incredibly excited and starting to get anxious. I'm focusing my research paper on education in Cyprus so I have to do tons of research before I get there so I am able to ask the right questions and can get as much out of my interviews in the field as possible. I've already contacted a few people in Cyprus (!) who I'm going to have some one on one interviews with.

I honestly don't remember all of the things I've done since the last time I posted a real update here so I'll just mention a couple of things that have been happening.

I haven't been doing any tourist-y sightseeing things at all. I have been to 2 DC eateries that I had been planning on going to while here, Ben's Chili Bowl and Busboys and Poets. Both restaurants have connections to history and delicious food. Ben's Chili Bowl has been around for many, many years and usually has lines out the door. The walls of the restaurant are filled with famous people who have enjoyed the chili (beef or veggie!) and there are signs proclaiming that the Obama family and Bill Crosby both get to eat for free. Busboys and Poets is named in honor of Langston Hughes and is a bookstore, restaurant and fair trade market. I'm pretty sure I had the best veggie burger of my life there.

This past week for class, we visited the Embassies of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey.

 

At the Embassy of Cyprus, we met with the actual Ambassador which was pretty exciting. He told us all about the history of Cyprus according to the Republic of Cyprus (I just realized that I don't think I've said much about the conflict in Cyprus on here yet so I'll explain it in a later post). He also told us about lots of places in Cyprus that we need to go to and got us all very excited for our trip.

 

The next day, we went to the Embassy of Greece where we spoke with a woman who is a political adviser to the Ambassador. There, we learned more about some of the other things that continue to strain relations between Greece and Turkey.

Then, on Friday, we went to the Embassy of Turkey which was a brand new, very swanky building with some of the prettiest light fixtures I've ever seen. There, we spoke with 1 political adviser and 1 spokesperson. The embassies of Cyprus and Greece were both very diplomatic and didn't really tell us much that we didn't already know. The two guys at the Turkish embassy seemed to actually treat us like intelligent human beings and spoke somewhat openly with us (as much as any diplomat could). The political adviser is currently studying International Conflict and Resolution at George Mason University, a program that my professor here used to teach at. Because of this, we had a common language and lens to look at the Cyprus issue through. The spokesperson was actually a Turkish Cypriot, who grew up in Cyprus and is actually the grandson of the man who was the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community on the island from 1974-2003.

My classmates and a political adviser to the Turkish Ambassador

On our way back from the Turkish Embassy, we found this! And I look like a crazy person in my excitement.

This week is Spring Break at American University so the dorms are pretty empty. This past weekend I went out to celebrate a friend's birthday and learned how to say happy birthday in Norwegian (gratulerer med dagen!). Yesterday and today I went to my internship at ILRF. This has been a pretty exciting week in the office- the new Executive Director is really starting her work, the invitiations for the organization's big fundraising event just went out and today, Killian from the Not For Sale Campaign was in the office to meet with a staff member at ILRF whose office I work in. It was a good surprise to see a familiar face from San Francisco. Not For Sale and ILRF have a joint project, Free2Work. This week also saw the launch of The CNN Freedom Project, an initiative by the media organization to bring attention to modern day slavery.


I know that the work I'm drawn to doing leads to me asking you lovely family and friends for help every once in a while. This time, I want you all to enter a contest! ILRF and its partners at the "Raise the Bar, Hershey!" campaign are hosting a Brand Jamming Contest until March 24th. So create a mock tagline, print ad or commercial to encourage Hershey to raise the bar for responsible cocoa sourcing! While come chocolate companies have taken steps to rid their supply chains of forced and child labor, Hershey's is lagging behind its competitors.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Williamsburg, VA to visit with my Dad and broski for the rest of Spring Break (and to work on my research paper). I'm excited to see them and get out of this dorm!

Hope everyone is doing well, I'll have free time for the rest of the week and will welcome distractions from my research so give me a call this week, I'd love to hear from everyone :)

I'm a lucky girl.

I know, I know, it has been too long since my last post. It has also been too long since I got more than 6 hours of sleep in a night or went a whole day without at least one cup of coffee. (But don't worry, I'm taking care of myself I swear!)

This semester has been full of reading about, talking about,  and researching about some depressing topics. Wars, genocide and the failures of peacemakers around the world are daily topics of conversations and readings. My classmates and I are pretty cynical about a lot going on in the world, especially after visiting the State Department but that's another story all together. However, whenever this all gets too depressing and all of the work gets too stressful, the universe steps in and makes me realize how lucky and loved I am. So this post is really dedicated to you, whoever you are reading this; THANK YOU! I am extremely grateful to have such wonderful people and opportunities in my life.

I'll update soon with some more about what I've been up to lately but this week alone I'll be visiting the embassies of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey.

Me outside the Embassy of Cyprus