Made it a month!

I have officially made it a month in Cyprus today!! That is a major accomplishment for me, not seeing any of my family and living away from home. If you know me then I am probably the most homely person you will know, hahah. Its tough but I'm managing...But hey only 11 months to go, yayyy!!...I think the everyday Skype sessions with my family definitely help as I get to see everyone.

Sooooo I've been a little bit naughty this week and decided to get my third tattoo yesterday!!!....It was my day off so I wanted to do something good and what could be better than getting a tattoo right!??
The original plan was for me and Elly to wake up early in the morning and go into town to some of the tattoo places that we have seen and get some quotes and see if they have time to tattoo me. But that was a complete fail as we didn't actually wake up till 1pm...OOPS! hahah...Well I'm allowed to sleep as it is actually the only time I get a decent amount of sleep.

With that plan being a flop I waited till Danni finished work at 4 and then go into town.....After 4 hours of walking around we finally found a tattoo parlour which looked professional. We walked in, I showed him the design I drew out, he gave me a quote and told us to come back a couple of hours later if I still decide to get it....So meanwhile me and Danni did a bit of shopping (obviously) and went for dinner at a cute little village restaurant. And of cores dinner wouldn't be complete without a little dessert, so we stopped at the ice cream shop opposite the restaurant.....best ice cream EVER!!!

2 and a half hours, a burger and a ice cream stop later we went back to the tattoo palour. The guy drew out a stencil of my design and added his own little touch to it...Looks amazing. I think it may have taken a total of 10 to 15 minutes to get the tattoo....Yes it was painful, its on my ribs which makes it extra painful...I somehow always get them in the most bony places.
But yeah that was basically my day off yesterday, definitely well spent!:)

I had a horrendous day at work today, it was a straight shift from 8 till 5....All the others had a day off today which makes work even more dreadful. But after my shift we decided to go for a yummy iced frappe, makes up for the long day at work :)

Well I have to be up by 6 in the morning and its already past 12 so a quick Skype session with the family and then straight to sleep! :)

Good night for now....

Here are some pictures as usual :)

Best ice cream around.

Tattoo number three...

Iced frappe after a long day at work

Just another cute village picture of town

Still adapting to change...

So 10 days and over 95 hours of work later I finally got a day off!!...that would never be allowed to happen back at home.... I guess its just one of the many things I have to adapt to.

Ohh hello! housekeeping just walked into our room. I always find it a little bit awkward that there's a lady cleaning our room, mum's taught us to clean our own mess so its uncomfortable when we have someone coming to change our beds and clean the bathroom every week.....But then again that's one less thing for us to do right?...I suppose anyone else would love to have a maid come clean once a week hahahh.

So far this week work has been decent, surprisingly it's not been that busy, but I suppose it will be from now on as everyone is starting to get their summer holidays....great stuff for us!!...I could really do with a holiday right now!

I try to get out of the hotel as much as I can, so on my long breaks on my split shift days or when I finish at 4 or 5 I always try to go out for a meal or a milkshake or ice cream....makes the day so much better!
The food here is still horrible, the same thing everyday, really starting to get sick of it already.... I think I'm addicted to nutella!! I sit in the room with my laptop munching on biscuits dipped in nutella everyday without fail! Its the only thing keeping me alive right now hahaha.

Me Elly and Stacy went for brunch yesterday and I decided to get a yummy chocolate and banana crepe (chocolate as in nutella obviously). Afterwords me and Stacy went to the beach as we had our day off, and we both ended up falling asleep for a good 30 mins....oops.
It is perfect on the beach!
Then in the evening after Dani finished work we went to a restaurant/bar called Chasers, they always give out discounted drinks for everyone who works at Amathus because they know what its like to work there, think that's all I will say haaa. Chasers is the little Amathus staff hang out place, they literally know everyone who works here. So we went there for a munch up....was yummy!

But for now I think I may have a little nap before I have to go back to work later....It's so ridiculously hot here, the heat just drains out all my energy. And this is apparently nothing its just the begging of summer, it reaches up to over 40 degrees in August and September....That should be very interesting for me!!

Anyways its nap time for me!! :)...I'll leave you with some more pictures. :)

Yummy chocolate and banana crepe

We found ketchup from TESCO!!!!

Good meal!

Girlies :)

 









 


 

The world of work

Working in this place is not a easy that's for sure! Honestly if you can work at Amathus Hotel you can work anywhere!!

My last day off was last Monday and the next one is not till Friday....CANT WAIT!!
I have been working so many different shifts at different times, the past two weeks are now just a blur. But I have to say that my split shifts are the best, I work during breakfast then clear everything up ready to set up for lunch, then I finish for the afternoon and return back to work for dinner. I love working during dinner...even though I don't finish till midnight. It's the best time to be working as its outside at the restaurant called 'The Laderaza'. The breakfast is also outside but it is definitely better in the evening as the atmosphere is so relaxed, the guests all come dressed nicely, there's always live music, and we get to see the sunset....well I don't really, I go in for a minute to clear plates and glasses, return outside and all of a sudden I notice its dark! Oh and the best part is that I get to see Elly, Stacy and Savvas, but they get to stand at their stations and serve the buffet food while I have to run around like a headless chicken collecting plates, getting drinks, clearing tables, getting bills and all sorts....The joys of being a waitress!

Right so far I have learnt how to set up tables for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The layout for breakfast is 'single' and for lunch and dinner it's 'double' and it's all silver service as its a 5 star hotel (extra effort). I can now open wine bottles...yyaayyy! Quite difficult when you have to open it in front of the customers, and there are different ways of serving white and red wines which is just confusing. Oh and I have learned how to polish cutlery, how could I forget!...That's the dreaded job that we get given when there is no more cutlery left to put out.

People here are so aggressive in the way that they talk, never say please or thank you, so its always a surprise when they do. The first day I got here everyone was so shocked that I use those words. And they are forever shouting at each other....I cant actually figure out if they are talking or fighting.

I finished for the day at 5 today so me, Elly and Dani decided to go out for dinner and get some proper food (some meat). They have rice, lentils, noodles and salad without fail in the canteen everyday!! there is never any meat or nutritious food so we try to go out at least once a week.

With all of the hard work we needed some time to have fun, so we decided to go out on Saturday night after our shift, it was a really good night as we bumped into loads of people from work....its nice seeing everyone out of the work place!

Well its going to be a long year but lets hope it flies by just like the rest do.

Some more pictures!!!

My name just about fits on the badge haha

The lovely restaurant uniform, minus the apron

A much needed frappe in the sunshine

The once a week meat consumption

And of course a dessert!

Busy Bee!!...

Its been a crazy week at work! the shifts are ridiculously long and at such odd times, and I only get one day off during the whole week.
It was my first day last Monday and I started at 8am till 5, which is 6am back at home! Took a while to adjust to Cypriot timing as I never used to go sleep till 2am which would be 4am here now... Not good!

I then had some split shifts during the week on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, were I went in at 8-12 and then had a break in between and had to go back to work at 7 till midnight. Definitely not something I would expect, but one of the things I have learned over the week is that anything goes in Cyprus, there are literally no rules!!!.... Then on Wednesday I had to work 1-10 straight and Saturday it was a horrid 7-4. And Friday I had my glorious one day off where I just decided to relax and go to the beach.

That was just last weeks rota, they change every week which means I will be working different hours each week and will have a different day off every week. Knowing that the rotas are placed up every Sunday I went to check my times last night to find that I had my day off today, I was so annoyed!! I just had my day off on Friday which means I will now be working for over 10 days straight without a day off!! And to top it all off I am doing split shifts from Tuesday to Thursday, then Friday I have to work 11-3, have a break then back to work 7 till midnight. And Sunday I'm in 1 till 11!!... Just have to wait till Sunday to see what joyful hours I get given next week.

Anyways now that I have had my massive rant over the horrendous working hours I have actually had the best day today. I had my day off with Elly and Stacy, so we decided to go explore Cyprus. We left the hotel at 11 this morning and didn't get back in till 10, that just shows its been an amazing day!

We went down to the city because I desperately needed a pair of new shoes! I can no longer handle having to put plasters on my feet everyday to cover my blisters and prevent them from bleeding....The joys of being a full time waitress!!

So the three of us spent the day shopping around in tow. Its absolutely beautiful! There are little roads full of tourists shops which look like little cute villages, and then there are also bigger shops on some of the main roads....We found a Topshop!!!! That was definitely the highlight of our day alongside the two Starbucks we had hahah.
For lunch we found a little English cafe called 'Piccadilly'where we got joined by Lee, who is Savva's room mate and Robert who I work with in the Restaurant.

Dani finished work at 4 and then just joined us in town. After town Elly, Dani and I decided to go for lunch to a restaurant by the beach, its absolutely amazing in the evening, the temperature is perfect the stars are always out and the atmosphere is just completely different during the evening and nigh time.

It was a perfect day. Well now I have a fun packed week of work to look forward to! Oooo but there are also some new people starting tomorrow, now I wont be the only new person in my department, that's something exciting :)

Here are some more pictures :)....

Mmmm Starbucks!!  

Little village shops

Honey coated nuts...Delicious!

Absolutely love this, looks beautiful.

Little London cafe.

We found Pinocchio!!

Long first week in Cyprus...

Wow it's been a very busy week to say the least!
Right so lets rewind to the begging when I set off to leave for sunny Cyprus. Lets just say the airport was a very eventful experience to start the whole journey, it turned out that I had exceeded the weight limit which I was allowed to take on the fight  (no surprise there!!) which lead to having to pay a ridiculous amount of money for just 6kg...oops!! But then again a girl needs all the essentials with her if shes going away for a year right!??

So after the horrible goodbyes I had to make my way (run) all the way to the other side of the airport and board the plane. About 4 hours later it was finally touchdown in Cyprus!. After finding my luggage with Savvas it was time to find Elly, Dani and Stacy and make our way to the hotel. Once we found the taxi driver and squeezed all of our bags and suitcases into the boot the 1 hour car journey to the hotel turned into a 3 hour journey!!

We hopped out of the taxi and walked into the hotel which looks absolutely amazing! the front lobby, the gorgeous view out the floor to ceiling length windows of the sea, the inside restaurant as well as the outside restaurant was all breathtaking.

we then got split and taken to our rooms. Elly and I were given a room, Dani and Stacy were given a room together and Savvas was given a room....So there was us thinking we would get a magnificent hotel room for the night before we get moved to our apartment the next day. But ohh no we could not have been any more wrong!! it turned out we would be staying at the hotel in little staff accommodation rooms for the year!!...what a letdown. On the plus side its just a elevator down to work :)

knowing that we would be living in this room me and Elly decided to make it a bit more homely, and I can safely say it now looks 100 times better than it did when we first walked in. Trying to unpack all our belongings was a bit of a struggle as there is hardly any storage space, but we managed it .    

The first 4 days we just enjoyed the beautiful sunshine and the beach, things which do not really exists back at home. It feels so good being in the sun all the time!!

And for the past 4 days we have all been at work but somehow it feels like I have been working for 4 weeks. Its so ridiculously fast pace but learn so much without realizing how much I learn in a day.
My feet have doubled in size with blisters due to standing on my feet 10 hours a day 6 days a week.
Its not easy let me tell you that!!

here are some pictures from the first week :)....

Goodbye England!!

The Hotel we work at from the beach view

    

Love spending time at the beach, so relaxing

 Hahahah thought these toilet symbols were genius!!.

Night out!!

Stacy, Dani, Me and Elly :)

The room definitely looks homely now :)