My Godson, Christos is in the middle of the tractor bed. He is now 9 years old, he was 8 years old in this picture. The last time I saw him before this was when I baptized him in 1996, when he was just a baby.
This is a picture of my grandfather's farm. In Greek, the word for Grandfather is Bapou. Even at his young age of 81 years, Bapou still works on the farm every day, driving the tractor down the road.
This is my Uncle, or O Thios in Greek, Baniko. O Thios Baniko took Jim, Christos, his wife Giga (my mother's sister), their other son Andreas (pictured in the back), and me to Occupied Cyprus. It was the first time in my life that I have been over there. I was 23 when I went and I had been to Cyprus many times in the past. O Thios Baniko drove up through the village where he lived before the war, and stopped by an old water pump he used to go to as a child. A Turkish-Cypriot living in the village came out and turned on the pump for him.
This is a picture of my mother's house, where she grew up and lived for 20 years. The house is situated shortly past the Green Line that divides Cyprus, in Occupied Cyprus. Since 1974, my mother has not seen that house until I showed her this picture. I attempted to knock on the door so I could come inside. There was somebody home, but he refused to answer the door. The grass was kept long and the guest house in the back had a collapsed roof that was likely damaged since 1974. This is a house that my mother has the legal rights to, but she cannot live there. It is not known when or if she would ever be able to move in there again. On the other hand, we went to my grandmother's (yia yia in Greek) sister's old house in Occupied Cyprus. The residents, Turkish-Cypriots, came out and offered us to come inside. O Thios Baniko offered the man some sweets to give to his son, and then we parted ways in what was a much more civilized incident.
We ended our sightseeing trip in Occupied Cyprus by driving as far east along the southern coast as we could, eventually stopping at the farthest eastern point in Cyprus. The drive along the stretch of road was amazing. There were miles of undisturbed beaches along side the hills and mountains and green areas. Jim and I sat out as far as we could on the rocks that surround this point.
This picture was taken about a mile or two off the coast of Cyprus. Another tourism attraction of Cyprus is it is in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, providing access to many places such as Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, and Africa. We took a two night three day cruise to Egypt. The picture taken is of the port city of Limasol.
The infamous mask of King Tut was on display when we visited the Egyptian Museam. The museum had thousands of artifacts on display, and thens of thousands more in storage. The mummy exhibit was open and the well preserved bodies of various kings and pharoahs were on display. King Tut's mask shown in this picture was just one of many masks that was placed over the deceased ruler. This mask was solid gold and had a couple more layers of gold or gold-lined masks on top and underneath this one.
After the Egyptian Museum, our tour took us directly to the three biggest pyramids in Egypt and the Sphinx. The pyramid in the background is the second largest. This pyramid, along with the biggest and next smallest, are the tombs of a grandfather, father, and a son who all succeeded each other in ruling Egypt. We were allowed to enter the smallest of these three, but unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures. The trip inside consisted of going down a shaft made of smooth stone blocks down under ground until we could not crawl through it any more. It was past that opening where the King was buried.
I was standing probably 800-1,000 feet away from this pyramid and Jim was standing about 500 feet away from me and we still could not fit it into the picture. It is a truly awesome site to see this humongous structures. Just as awesome is the fact that there were no cranes or vehicles that would transport these blocks across the desert. Each pyramid took somewhere between 25-30 years to finish.
This is a picture of castle located over the water in the city of Pafos. On the way to Pafos, we passed by the three rocks that protruded out of the sea that are believed to be the birthplace of Aphrodite. This is the same city where the ancient houses that have thousands of years old mosaics were.
This was the scene at my grandmother's house the night before we left. Aunts, uncles, first cousins, second cousins, third cousins, and grandparents were all in attendance that night. There were probably 40 people there at one point in the night. The party went straight through the night and involved a nightlong feast of homeade Cypriot foods and talking. About 20 hours later, we were back home.
