A small world and the butcher shop.

Do vegetarians eat animal crackers? ~Author Unknown

Growing up on a farm teaches a person where things like hamburgers truly originate. I understand that the cattle raised there are not really meant to be pets. It’s a fact of life that one comes to accept when you grow up in a rural area.

Armed with this knowledge (or perhaps because of it), I prefer to keep the thought of those cows in the fields separate from the beef I'm purchasing for my next meal. Apparently Cypriots do not share this idea.

It could be a freshness thing, like subliminal messaging: you see the picture and your brain relates that to fresh food. Whatever the reason, it’s a bit...disturbing for those who aren’t used to seeing these animal images at the market.

The last and segment shot was at a butcher shop. True to form, there were images of cows, pigs and chickens with the menu. These were done in a cartoon-style (which doesn't make it better), clip-art. It was certainly an unpleasant thing for me to behold.

Now’s the time to reveal a secret. Well, to those who know me well enough, it’s not really a secret, but I’m going to pretend so anyway. I am a major germophob. It’s not with everything, but sometimes food is one of those things. It’s mostly when I have the opportunity to think too much.

The best way to explain this is to give an example. When I cook any kind of meat, poultry, etc., I wash my hands obsessively. I can’t stand the thought of having touched raw meat with my hands or any utensils without immediately washing.

Additionally (and this might come as a shock to my fellow Americans), I’m not much of a meat eater. I hate it when there’s just a lot of it--what I describe as being “too much” (think Hardee’s commercials and you get my gist).

This is why the butcher shop was sort of difficult for me. It was tough to see all those knives and such lying around and consider the thoughts of how much meat had gone through there, how often things had been washed, and how they make the animal-meat connections.

Luckily, my group was not in charge of filming and I was not on camera. This is why I was able to duck in and out of the prep room as I wished. In doing so, I had the opportunity to notice the relationships between those watching us.

Since the beginning, we’ve been hearing how small of an island Cyprus is, in respect to other places and how people generally know each other (or of someone who knows someone, etc.). This concept has slowly become more and more evident to me as we have traveled around.

Constantia, our translator, has easily made connections with the people we’ve been to visit. She was even related to the cheesemaker, which she realized while we were there. The breadmaker was in the same village that Constantia’s father was from, meaning they knew each other’s families.

In similar fashion, the butcher was someone she knew; a family friend. Her father even joined us at the shoot and conversed freely with him.

Seeing these exchanges are yet another thing that remind me of home. It shows me that it is a small world, even though we may be miles (kilometers :) ) apart.

And every day, every trip, every connection we make with others just continues to make a smaller world.