March 29, 2003 — Mudeif Productions

The six of us - two from Palestine, four from Egypt - joined a bus tour this morning. Cyprus is known as the birthplace of Aphrodite, goddess of love, so we had to oblige the Cyprus Aphrodite tour. The rest of the bus was filled with Brits (this being a former British colony) who looked like veterans of English-language bus tours in former British colonies.

As we traveled the lovely green hills of Cyprus, we heard the recounting of various legends surrounding the goddess of love and beauty. Two of the stops on our way we had trouble distinguishing when our tour guide talked about them: the birthplace of Aphrodite, and the bathplace of Aphrodite. With her Greek/British-accented English, it came out: "the bahthplace of Aphrodite." Ahh, the bahthplace. The trip was not designed for maximum exposure to anything local, but rather as a scenic views and quaint shopping excursion - eating at restaurants that used "Aphrodite" in their title.

*A Greek priest selling oranges out of the back of a truck.*

We spent half an hour wandering the streets of Polis, which - from our experience, at least - is a town where everyone sells post cards and tiny statuettes of Aphrodite. The goddess of love and beauty.

Elizabeth took the opportunity of the long lunch break to wander a hilly nature trail and peer at the flowers, so many of which are the same ones blooming in Zababdeh now.