I was getting annoyed with the shower when I got here because no matter how much I turned the control to the left, it didn’t get hot. Fortunately, some elementary problem solving skills clicked in and I turned it to the right and got almost scalded. We treat “left” so badly — “left behind”, “left-handed compliment”, “leftovers”. Left handed people are “left” with few if any left handed desks and so on. Literally on the other hand, we have “our inalienable rights”, the “right” way to do it. Just another form of discrimination but driving on the left does disturb me a bit. As long as I look both ways like we were taught as kids, I should be OK. The history of driving on the left is supposedly that the driver wants to use his right hand to attack people coming the other way if needed. If the driver is on the right side (as they are when the vehicle drives on the left), the sword is in a better position. Then during the French revolution, royalty drove on the left and forced the peasants out of their way to the right. When they overthrew the monarchy, they switched to the right.

Do you care about any of that? Sorry if you don’t. It feels good to me to ramble about something probably mostly unrelated to get started. Getting back to my travels, my hosts took me on a tour of Limassol including a packed pizza and pasta place. In the late 1980’s I decided I was sick of pizza and would only eat it when everyone else was and other options were scarce. It’s taken me up to last year to get over it. I especially liked the very thin crust, the greek spices, and the real tomato taste. We then went to a child care fair that their children were involved with. I used to be chair of the board of directors of the Indiana County Child Day Care organization (which has since improved their name) so it was interesting to see that things seemed pretty much the same.

Another ramble here, it’s good to rediscover that child care and so much of life in some very different cultures is almost the same. I was in Africa for half a year as a ninth grader. I was the first ever European to go to that high school. I was scared at first but discovered that we had many of the same tastes — stupid jokes, dropping pens at a pre-arranged time, trying to avoid homework, and so on. However, when we described our homes and our food tastes and many other things, we were in very different worlds. It was the classic multicultural moment, we’re the same underneath even though we have many valuable differences.

Back to the hotel for what seems like will be a four week recovery, simultaneous to the four week trip.