On The Island

The water man came in the morning to top the swimming pool up. The boys were really amused at Rosie as she loves catching the water as the huge hosepipe goes into the pool. She gets soaked but loves it.

Today River had his turn at being journalist on Grandad’s newspaper.

see link

It would be nice if people actually filled in the questionaire.

They then had timed swimming, two lengths twice timed and then Grandad said they could have money for seconds they took off their best times. Tariq then managed to get 19lira straight away!! This goes on all week. I think we will be broke before long!

[slideshow]

Tariq was up early and so we took Rosie down to the beach. We bought fresh village loaves on the way back to have with our bacon and eggs for breakfast.

More swimming time, the boys spend a lot of time inthe pool. The afternoons (12-4) they do things indoors, we don’t want any burnt boys.

As it cooled a little in the evening they bucketed water up and down the drive to water the plants. Not an easy job but they are all very willing.

[slideshow]

The boys were heavily into their jobs and challenges…you can see the lira signs appearing before their eyes!

Sol is writing and taking pictures of 20 Natural History things he can see in North Cyprus. His bougainvillea one, Grandad decided he would post in his newspaper and he received a few good comments on it. Well done Sol.

see link

The boys spent a lot of time in the pool, they love it. They also volunteered to help with the gardening (extra pocket money!) and Mal had them up and down the drive with buckets of water as well.

[slideshow]

OK, so we managed to get back home courtesy of Easyjet (additional tickets we had to purchase), so decided it was time to see how Atlasjet perform. We have heard so many stories but hoped they had sorted out teething problems. I have tickets to take the boys back in August, stay a week in the UK and then return on my own. Of course, because Rhys picks us up and has to drive from Cardiff, we booked them to and from Heathrow. We know that Atlasjet are not doing the Heathrow or Gatwick flights. It will be a very long way for Rhys to drive but we don’t have any  option. Boys in the car and off we went to Atlasjet in Girne. It is very easy to find by the big roundabout between Girne and the Lefkosa road.

We went in there, waited 10 minutes until it was our turn. They re-issued all our six tickets for August.  OK, to Stansted and not Heathrow but at least we have seats, unlike my journey to the UK when 60 people did not get on the plane. They also re-issued my ticket from the UK to Ercan, which some uninformed people are saying they won’t do. It was easy and the girls in there were very pleasant…sorted!

Back home and all in the pool. In the evening Grandad cooked us a barbecue.

[slideshow]

A day for the boys in the pool, playing cards and then a film. They also have a jobs rota, the same as they do at home and they earn their pocket money. It means that we can spend more time with them as all the jobs are out of the way.

[slideshow]

We packed up the car and returned our hire car to Gatwick (different airport, so more expense!) We met up with Rhys who had the four boys who were coming back for a month. I suppose thanks to Easyjet at least we are getting back to the TRNC, even if we don’t have secure tickets to take the boys back home again- Hopefully we can get some sense out of Atlas jet when we get back.

The boys were really good and the Easyjet flight was a pleasure with such nice flight attendants, what a change from CTA. Margaretha collected us from Larnaca. Of course the boys wanted to get in the pool straight away and were so excited tht we didn’t go to bed until 3 in the morning!