My Favourtie Things

While I was walking home last night I thought of a list of Things that I love about this little island of Gran Canaria.....

- When it rains it only rains for about 10 seconds....however people still run back to the car to get an umbrella.
- If I stare out the kitchen window and look closely there are always lizards running in and out of the stone wall.
- They are very creative with the centre pieces of their round-a-bouts. My favourites are the creepy eye, the giant tea cups straight out of Disneyland, the giant mushroom, and the birds that actually fly around in a circle.
- I can't put on pants before 9 pm without regretting it and wishing that I had worn shorts.
-The word for bus here is different than everywhere else in Spain - la guagua- pronounced  la wawa, thats how I hear it anyways....it may not be an accurate pronunciation guide.
- If I wanted to go a day without seeing the ocean I would have to lock myself in my room in the basement.
- I don't know if I've mentioned this before but I live in a golf course. Complete with tennis and padel club. Really wasn't too thrilled with this when I arrived,  but I was thinking, and how many people do you know who can start a story with "so this one time when I was living in a golf course full of bunny rabbits...."
-There are rabbits in the golf course. They remind me of UVIC!
- I never knew before that there are so many different kinds of palm trees...and cacti, love the creepy cactus plants that look like they are going to come alive and eat you. I suppose I have a bit of an over active imagination.....
- I never have to worry about grass stains when I play outside with the boys because the grass is fake. Can't really get dirty either.
-The freshly squeezed orange juice every morning.
- No two clocks ever say the same time
-The flower, bird of paradise, grows along the street in people's gardens.
- When I babysit the parents leave so late that it is practically already time for the kids to go to bed and they don't come back until 4 a.m.!


Well thats all I can think of for now.....its quite a bit though eh? Maybe tomorrow I'll make a list of things I hate and then compare..... although that probably wouldn't leave me in a very good mood so I might skip that. Most everything that I don't like here revolves around taking the bus......

Oh No

Okay people I just spent the morning checking out volunteer websites that I found in my "Work your way around the world" book.
Does anyone else out there realize that you can go to almost anywhere in the world, offer to work a few hours a day, get room and board, and well, its done all the time!
Anywhere. Like I mean there is loads of stuff out there and all you really need is the money for a plane ticket.
And you can do just about anything.
We should have learned about this in Planning 10. I wouldn't have had to invent stuff that I wanted to do.

Anywhere. Really, anywhere.

Going Backwards Just A Bit....

I was just going through my pictures and realized that I never posted to the end of my Austria trip. This is in Salzburg. Me encanta el arbole!

When I got out of the bus and saw this view I was like oh, hey look, I'm home! Doesn't this look like Nelson? Maybe minus the church steeple? One of these days, maybe not really soon, but eventually I am going to realize that I come from one of the most beautiful places on Earth and be content to stay where I am!

This one is for Helene! This is the place from the Sound of Music where the kids are all in the trees.

Hiking in Innsbruck, it may have been just a little colder than Spain....

Ooooooohhh.....ahhhhhh.....mountains......   One thing that is very different about hiking in Austria is you can stop at a little hut after two hours and be served hot chocolate and apple strudel :)

The strangest tourist place I think I've ever been - Swarovski (hopefully I spelled that right?) Diamonds weird museum type thing.

I dont know if I'm going to survive this winter, I can only get sunburnt so many times.....

"Its so hot out!"
"This isn't normal, not at all. Its winter now, usually it is cold and rainy. no es normal. You will see, it will get cold and you'll have to buy winter clothes."

I have this conversation with different people almost everyday. Yesterday, apparently it rained, and everyone wore pants and were like see see, its winter! And I'm like, the sign still says it s 25 degrees! And are you sure it rained? Or were they just cleaning the streets again? Maybe it rained while I was in the bathroom or something because I definitely did not see it.

Hence I'm still holding out on buying the winter clothes. I'll believe this winter when I see it. The funniest day was November 1st. To be fair, it might have been a few degrees lower than usual but I came upstairs and everyone in my Spanish family were wearing pants. Then I went to school and my spanish teacher was as well. I totally missed the memo that winter started exactly on November 1st.

I'm really not complaining though, I dont mind still being able to go to the beach every weekend. For Halloween, however, the boys had a problem that we definitely never have in Canada. Their costumes were to warm. They couldn't wear their dracula capes! They went to a Halloween party but the North American culture hasn't taken over enough yet for them to be able to go trick or treating. We did carve a pumpkin. It came with instructions and a black sticker face just in case you weren't sure what a jack-o-lantern looked like. The boys were really confused though as to what exactly the pumpkin was for. They were convinced that we now had to go trick or treating and collect the candy in the pumpkin. It didn't  matter how many times their mother and I tried to explain to them that we use a plastic pumpkin to collect the candy, or better yet pillow case, they were still convinced that the pumpkin needed candy. I finally did manage on Halloween night to show them how a candle goes inside the pumpkin. A candle is much less exciting than candy.
I was also invited to a Halloween party and it was actually really well done. The only things that gave away that we weren't in North America was the food and the music. The music being Spanish salsa and the food being barbecued meat, and olives and not a piece of candy in sight.

Honestly I think its kind of sad how our commercialized holidays are spreading their way around the globe. I dont really now how to explain why I don't like it, it's just a little scary.

David and Ivan.

Time in Spain. Love it.