Thinking Allowed: Hobby zoo, homemade paper, and parkour

Our time in Nicosia has gone fast. With sunny weather, we have gotten to spend a lot more time outdoors enjoying both the natural Cypriot landscape and beaches, as well as the planted Eucalyptus forests. The local almond trees have all blossomed and are full of furry baby almonds and the invasive wattle is in full bloom, making us all miss Australia. Nicosia is one of those cities that could be dismissed as slightly rundown and uninteresting at first glance. When you wander its streets long enough though you stop seeing the crumbling buildings and instead find all the welcoming friendly residents. It definitely lives up to the mediterranean and islander vibe. There are welcoming forests and parks tucked away behind malls and residential areas. Most stores seem to sell jars of honey from some relative or friend in the mountains. The cafes are always full of socializers who seem to be able to laugh and joke for hours.

The children have been doing gymnastics at a brand new state of the art gym, and have been thrilled. Aurora has been doing a teen taekwondo class. She has been warmly welcomed and likes to joke about how different this dojang is from the much more regimented one in Paphos. Finally, we have also been taking full advantage of the great climbing/parkour gym in Nicosia. Levana can now get both feet off the ground and all girls have been excited to rebuild some finger strength. I have been going to an adult parkour class once a week and it has been very exciting. It is a full body sport, much like gymnastics, but unlike gymnastics, it is much more free form. Sometimes overwhelmingly freeform. I am still developing the style needed to create impressive parkour 'runs.' Maybe one day I will have the time to explore the sport more fully and muster the courage to do flips off of high boxes.

In Paphos the girls and I had a great time cooking eggs in the fire. The girls didn't believe that this task was possible so we ripped up a bunch of their completed schoolwork and created a Bonfire of Knowledge. When there homework fire went out, I tucked an egg into the still smoking Embers of Knowledge, and left it there until the ashes cooled. We all enjoyed eating the egg cooked out of their educational accomplishments. In Nicosia, I decided we needed an encore of homework recycling projects. Sophia and Zadie gleefully cut up pages and pages of completed schoolwork into a pot. We filled the pot with water and let it soak overnight. Unfortunately, we have no blender so we then did our best to further chop up the soggy mass of knowledge until is was a sludge. More water was added to the sludge and then, using a frame and a piece of mesh we found in a work site, the girls created a new blank sheet of paper. Well, three sheets of paper. It was great fun, and I think we will be revisiting paper making.

I took the girls to a zoo here in Nicosia which led to a lot of discussion afterwards. Five years ago we visited a very sad zoo in the Philippines. The condition of the animals was noteworthy enough that we all still use that zoo as examples for various ways we can do better in life. This zoo in Nicosia was not sad in the same way but much more bizarre. The zoo is the creation of a hobby zooist. He started off collecting birds as a child and that passion just grew and grew and eventually extended into a full blown zoo. And, connected to the zoo, a large pet shop. We didn't go into the large petshop, but the smell and noise of animal emanated out in such a way that I can sort of imagine the quantity of pets on offer. We did go into the zoo. We bought two heads of lettuce at the door to feed animals. And I assure you the kids were admirably equitable in their feeding of lettuce to animals to the point of me having to explain why it is a bad idea to throw pieces of lettuce to some animals - like bears and lions. Because, yes, in addition to billions of birds and other animals, this zoo also had a few big animals - two bears, two lions, two jaguar; a real Noah's ark of large animals kept in inappropriately small enclosures. We all agreed we would skip over the sadder big animals and focus on the others. Even so, the organization of the zoo was both perplexing and raised lots of questions in our minds. Why was the camel kept with the donkeys? Why were there rabbits in the bird enclosures? Why was there a large African gazelle with the goats? Why were there 10 bulls in a small pen? Why would the zoo need 20 emus instead of 3? Why are all the Emus pulling out their feathers? Why did the lemurs get a massive enclosure but the two jaguars a large birdcage? How did the lemurs roaming around the grounds escape? Why are piles of dead chicks in enclosures so depressing? Why is more not more when it comes to zoos? Is it alright to mix a petshop with a zoo? These were just a few of the questions that came up. And yet, the kids all had an amzing time and got to see an astounding number of animals. And the owner of the zoo does truly love his animals and cares for them as much as a small team of people can care for thousands and thousands of animals. Really, it made me realize that we are envisioning Noah's ark all wrong.