3 weeks of 8

Tomorrow 3 of our 8 weeks in Gran Canaria will be over. I simply can not believe how fast the time has passed. We did spend far too much time hunting for a place to live. When we came down here we had booked a hotel room for the first 2 weeks thinking that finding a place to stay for the remaining 6 weeks would be no problem at all. The problem really isn't finding a place to live, the problem is how much you're willing to pay for that appartment or bungalow. We thought that as we were down here for such a long time (it seems that way to us) we would be so called long term renters, but no. You have to stay here for at least 6 months to be considered a long term renter, anything shorter than that and what people are offering you are places at vacation rates, which is quite expensive. We had to prolong our stay in the Montemar hotel with another 2 days before we finally found a bungalow in Maspalomas, just down the hill from Playa Del Ingles. And it's such a nice bungalow too. Very private, and with a large terrasse where we tend to spend a lot of time. I've included a couple of photos in this post of the terrasse so you can all get and idea of how nice it is and get really envious!!!

The challenge of living in a bungalow of course is the local animal life, and by that I especially mean cockroaches. There aren't that many of them, and we hardly ever see them during the day, but they do come out at night - and we don't really care that much for those kind of creatures. We do our best to keep them on the outside of the bungalow though, we have placed traps for them all over the bungalow - and so far two have entered the house and been killed by them. We've been having a strange and creepy experience over the last couple of days though: there's something wrong with the toilet, it suddenly, since yesterday morning, doesn't flush properly - it floods the bathroom floor and then run out of water - and these quite large cockroaches will come through the pipes into the toilet. Only two of them so far, but can you just imagine how creepy that is, cockroaches, very much alive ones, coming through the toilet!!! We spoke with one of the neighbour women and apparantly she's experienced this as well.

We have been promised that someone will come and fix the toilet today, and hopefully that means today, because yesterday we were told Mañana - which the dictionary says means tomorrow. What I have learnt since comming here two weeks ago though is that what Mañana really means is any other day than today. It might mean tomorrow, but it might also mean some time during the next week, or what ever...So hopefully today, and while we're waiting we're using the public toilet by the pool which isn't that bad but still, would be nice to have a fully funcioning one of our own.

As we have spent so much time hunting for a place to live there really haven't been time to many other things. We have of course spent probably too much time in the Dunes & Tunes Irish bar on the beach (about 10 night so far), we have rented some movies and a series called "Carnivale" from a local dvd store called Jags. We have been to Arguineguin a couple of times for some neccessary purchases, they have a couple of nice stores there for buying things for the house. I still have done no sunbathing what so ever, but my face and and arms have quite a nice tan from all the walking around we've been doing. I hope that now that we're settling into this bungalow that I might actually find at least some time for some sun bathing, but I've never been very keen on spending a lot of time doing that anyway. Tomorrow we're going to the market in San Fernando. I've heard that there's supposed to be a used book stall there and hopefully there is because I brought 3 books with me here, and I finished them all last week so now I really need something new to read.

What do I miss now that I'm here? Not much. I do miss friends and family in Norway, but I got used to that living in England too. I must admit I do miss having TV channels that I can actually understand. We have about 10 TV channels here in the bungalow, all in Spanish - and my Spanish vocabulary that might have increased to about 30 words so far just doesn't make TV watching in Spanish very exciting. I am trying to learn some new words though, but I have a hard time remembering that left is izquierdo and right is derecho - I am however able to remember that further is otro! And why do I try to learn these particular words? Because it turns out that the bungalow complex we live in isn't that well known with the taxi drivers, but they do all know where Holiday World is, which is just down the street - and then it is very helpful to be able to tell them further and left or right. Living in England was so great because I speak English very well, so I never had any problems with the language - here in Spain I get ever so frustrated because I can't speak the language. I am planning on trying to take some langauge lessons now that we have finally found a place to live and are settled in. It would be great to be able to put some sentences together, and to understand more of what people are saying around me.

So, that's pretty much it really for our first 3 weeks in Gran Canaria, mainly it's been great, and I'm really happy to be here. And I will try to get another post on this blog before another 3 weeks is gone!!!