American in Cyprus: Easter Weekend

For Easter, the whole family travels to the village for the weekend. The village house is in the Pafos region. The first day we were there, Friday, was a bit rainy in the morning. We did what everyone else does in that situation. We went to the mall. There is a new mall in Pafos and we wanted to check it out. It is probably the nicest mall in Cyprus right now, but there are only two others with a third being built. Once the weather cleared up we went to the Pafos waterfront area for a walk. Saturday we stayed put in the village. Themis' family has three dogs that they brought along. Sofia is scared to death of them, but Alex spent most of his time with them. He really enjoyed having the chance to take them on walks. His favorite is Gabby. The Easter church service starts at 11:00 at night on Saturday. The ending is at midnight to welcome in Easter. Demetris is the only one who attended this year from our family. I didn't see much point in taking Marissa and Sofia hates the noise of the "bombs" going off. Alex said he wanted to go but he was too tired and fell asleep. Once everyone was home around 12:30 a.m. yiayia stayed home with the sleeping children and the rest of us gathered at Uncle Yiannis and Aunt Margaretha's house to break the fast that everyone else had been doing. During this fast for holy week they don't eat meat or dairy products. The tradition is to eat a lemon-rice soup after church. Some of it also has chicken in it. We finally made it to bed around 3:00 in the morning so it wasn't that easy to jump out of bed with kids who wanted to look for Easter eggs and baskets. We did it anyway. This year since the Greek Easter coincided with the Western Easter the bunny left baskets for our nieces as well. The bunny doesn't leave chocolate or hide baskets in Cyprus. Poor Nayia took a bit of time to find her basket that was hidden in the washing machine. For lunch we had the typical souvla done on the grill and pastitio. Everything was good.