{"id":624,"date":"2016-09-01T21:00:43","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T21:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.expedia.com.au\/stories\/follow-your-roots-ada-nicodemous-cyprus\/"},"modified":"2022-08-08T23:21:42","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T23:21:42","slug":"follow-your-roots-ada-nicodemous-cyprus-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.expedia.com.au\/stories\/follow-your-roots-ada-nicodemous-cyprus-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Follow Your Roots: Ada Nicodemou’s Cyprus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Home and Away actress and Australian-born Cypriot Ada Nicodemou follows her roots back to Cyprus. <\/em><\/p>\n

Now my son Johnas is a little older, I wanted to take him to Cyprus. I wanted him to meet all the family, to experience our culture, to eat the food and have his cheeks squeezed by his aunties! I wanted Johnas to have a better understanding of how our family traditions started and feel a greater connection to the rest of our family.<\/p>\n

My family is from Limassol<\/a> in the south of Cyprus. My mum one of four siblings so there\u2019s aunties, uncles, lots of first cousins and my dad who all live over there. So they spend the whole month fighting over who was going to feed us whose house we are going to, and it\u2019s not even just \u201care you guys coming over tonight, it\u2019s what are you guys doing for lunch?\u201d<\/p>\n

Every night was spent at one of my family\u2019s house for a souvla, which is a traditional Cypriot dish of meat cooked on the coals of a BBQ (Greeks do this with a whole lamb but we cook souvla with skewers of meat). My uncle is usually in charge of the souvla! We chat and drink Cypriot wine, it\u2019s beautiful. Food is a huge part of our culture but dinner is long! We\u2019d spend two or three hours every night feasting with the family, so Johnas was going to bed every night at midnight, which was interesting for a four year old!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m such a foodie and there\u2019s just something about Cypriot halloumi, goats cheese and yoghurt \u2013 you can\u2019t get the same in Australia. The pork and lamb is the same. It all just tastes so much better over there. It\u2019s the little things like this that really make going back to Cyprus worthwhile.
\n
\nBut for me, it\u2019s also about reconnecting with my roots and remembering my family. One evening when we were at my mum\u2019s village of\u00a0Fasoula<\/a>, near Limassol, we went down to the cemetery to visit my grandmother and grandfather My aunty also pointed out where my great aunty and great uncle are and told stories of them. The cemetery was filled with my family, so it was nice to spend time honouring them also taking Johnas to see that too.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s funny, when I grew up in the Western Suburbs of Sydney there weren\u2019t any other Greeks there, and I was a little embarrassed about being different. Even though I still went to Greek school and ate traditional food, I didn\u2019t really embrace my culture until I got older and now that I have Johnas.
\n
\nBeing Cypriot is a part of my identity. Leah, the character I play on Home and Away, was originally meant to be Greek. When I started on the show I asked the writers if it was possible to make her Cypriot, because growing up most people hadn\u2019t heard of Cyrpus, and these days most people just think it\u2019s part of Greece. It\u2019s great that I\u2019ve been able to be on TV for 22 years as an Australian-born Greek Cypriot.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s many beautiful places in Europe to visit but I\u2019m always drawn back to Cyprus because of my family. It\u2019s a real community and I\u2019m glad I had the chance to show Johnas where we come from.<\/p>\n

Will Hamish Blake\u00a0track down his great-grandmother’s birthplace? Find out<\/a>, and see more of our Follow Your Roots stories\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Expedia compensates authors for their writings appearing on this site, such compensation may include travel and other costs<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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