Number Six. Probably the last one from Fuerteventura.

So here I am, two years on from first moving to Fuerteventura.  A whole six entries ago I was writing the start of this blog in a bar that I would later work in for most of my time here.

The two years here have served us pretty well.  We have met some lovely people, some not so lovely people and quite a fair amount of just strange people.  Fuerteventura is very unique for the type of people that live here.  A lot of them are in a little bubble.  However, the friends I have made have been good ones and I have so many good memories (and a dog) that I am taking back to Gran Canaria with me. We go in a couple of weeks.

We decided to leave because Fuerteventura was never going to be the land of opportunity for us. The island pretty much dead all year round, when it is busy its kids and old people.  It is a lovely place, just not the place for us at the moment.

The past few months have been nice, I've had my sister and her little family visit. I've had one of my oldest and closest friends, Dionne visit. I've been back to England to see everyone.

But the big story of the past six months goes like this:

In my last entry I spoke about my parents being over here. They were spending six months of the winter travelling the Canary islands. They started the first six weeks in Fuerteventura. They went to Lanzarote for five weeks, Tennerife for five weeks and Gran Canaria for five weeks before finishing of their travels back in Fuerteventura.

However, in the last week of Gran Canaria, my Dad was taken ill. He had spent the past five or six weeks with a sometimes painful cough that came and went. He was feeling very run down.  Not like him, usually he just gets on with it but this illness, whatever it was, was getting to him.  Two trips to the doctors and jabs in his bum didn't help. On 9th March my Mum insisted they go to the hospital when he was feeling even worse and his legs were swelling.

She called me from the hospital, said she had been in the waiting room for hours while they were doing tests, had no contact with him the whole time. Then she phoned me at 7pm and said the words I will always remember "Sam, they think he has Leukemia. Call Gillian, I have to go".

Gillian, my sister was so good on the phone. I was in bits and she calmed me down. As soon as I stopped crying I didn't cry again for the next 5 months.

I booked the first flight to Gran Canaria for the next morning. Dad was officially diagnosed on 10th March 2013. I stayed with my mum in a tiny apartment we rented near the hospital for three and a half weeks in total, taking a 10 day break in the middle to go back to Fuerteventura and sort things out at home. My brother and sister flew from England and stayed with my mum while I was away. But my Dad was in isolation so only one person at a time could go in to see him. Mum usually slept there. Even though there was so much waiting around time and long periods of doing nothing, it was exhausting.

Dad did amazingly well. He was extremely sick and couldn't get out of bed to use the toilet, couldn't feed himself, etc. But through it all he smiled as much as he could. When he had the strength, he danced and made jokes.  When it was my time in there with him (Mum went in the evenings, stayed over night, came out early morning. I would go in about 11 until 6) I would often just sit and read or doze next to him. He was too exhausted to watch any TV or talk.  The staff were amazing and Dad built up a really nice relationship with most of them, even though the language was a huge barrier. That's how Dad is, people can't help but like him.

But there were dark times.  He had night terrors and hallucinations which was frightening for us all.  There was an incident he woke up in the night not knowing where he was, he went to walk and fell over, pulling all the lines from his chest, blood all over the floor. Mum was staying with him in the room but she didn't know how to call for help in Spanish.

But from that moment that Gillian calmed me down when we were first told, I just knew he would be OK. No doubt about it.  I knew the journey would be hard for him, I didn't realise just how hard, but I absolutely KNEW in my heart of hearts that he was going to be OK.

After grueling chemo and a recovery period, he left Gran Canaria hospital, which provided him with such good care on 10th April to continue treatment in England. I went back to Fuerteventura on 11th.

Dad still had a lot of treatment to go through back home, more chemo and a bone marrow transplant. He was in hospital most of the time, but constantly improving.

And on 26th August 2013 he was given the all clear!! It was then that I finally let all the emotion come out.  26th August is a new date to celebrate for us.  His body went through Hell and some of his family didn't hold out hope. But we did. Me, my mum and him. We all absolutely knew that it wasn't the end. My Dad is an inspiration to me. His strength is beyond belief.

So in a week from now, Dad leaves hospital Cancer free and I leave Fuerteventura. It will be an emotional time. But the start of something so much better for us!

Look out for my next entry, New Life in Gran Canaria - again!

Number Five

I am so terrible at this!  I thought I would be on blog number 42 by now.  I have had a recent burst of motivation from the fact that I feel slightly brain dead living here at the moment and I need to do something to make my brain cells start moving again.  Yes, I know, 5 blog posts ago I was very happy and excited.  But that was over a year ago and I would like to say a lot has happened since then, but it hasn't, and that is the problem.

So since March my boyfriend bought me a Sony Tablet (April), which I have probably spent around 5 hours per day using due to sheer boredom, which turned into addiction.  I do love it, nearly as much as I love Jack, who had his first birthday in August.  In May, me, the boyfriend and two of our friends went to Gran Canaria for a week.  It's great only living half an hour on the plane away, it feels like even though I miss it there, I can pop over whenever I like.  We were there for Gay Pride and we (the girls) had a great time, while the boys lost far too much in the casino.  I also started a new job in a bar with my boyfriend.  I have worked there for around 6 months now.  It's more fun than my waitressing job, but I still feel that emptiness I described before.  I need to be successful and busy and in demand.  Unfortunately, Fuerteventura is not the place to be if you want big opportunities.  The mother-in-law came to stay in our one-bedroomed apartment in August, I wont elaborate anymore on that.  And finally, in July we got a car, which has had some great use.  We have visited Corralejo a handful of times, I take Jack to the beach more often.  It's lovely to be able to get out and about in the car, away from the tiny town we live in.  We have spent more in repairs than the car cost, but I love it and I wouldn't change it.

My parents are over at the moment.  They are in their third week here.  They have three weeks left.  After they both officially retired in June this year, they went travelling in a caravan around England.  They love it, but they have always said they wanted to spend the Winter in a warmer climate, so they are island hopping until March.  It's going fine so far, seeing them every day.  Sometimes I get a little irritated that they make me feel 5 again, but I take deep breaths and remind myself to bite my tongue.

I'm signing off now.  I have spent all day in separate rooms to my boyfriend, who has had his face burried in ebay all day (he has just come across ebay and thinks it's the best thing since sliced bread), yet as soon as I started writing this, his sixth sense told him to decide to do his ironing, which didn't go according to plan and he has spent the last 10 minutes bashing work surfaces, huffing and puffing and asking me why the iron wont work, so I've lost all concentration power.

Until next time...  (May 2013)

Number Four

As I'm writing this, I look like a hamster, cheeks filled with Victoria Sponge cake - home made!  By me!  I've been trying my hand at cooking different things this week, now that I've gone back to part time at work (by part time I mean 5 shifts a week).  I made chocolate brownies, which ended up more like cookies.  The stew I did looked like something you would use to make your plants grow...  The Victoria Sponge was actually quite nice, if I do say so myself.  Although, I put the butter cream in the middle before the cake had cooled, so when I went back to the fridge to surprise my boyfriend with a cake, the middle had disappeared!  I hadn't thought it would melt into the cake.  But, you live and learn.

Recently I've been thinking about what I'm going to do with myself job-wise.  I know my Spanish needs to improve if I want to better myself here, so the next time I go into the capital, Rosario, I'm going to look into Spanish classes.  I get motivated to teach myself for short bursts of time, but I think if I had a commitment to a class, I'd learn much better and faster.

I took my dog, Jack for a walk recently with a friend and his two dogs.  Jack hasn't been socialised very much and I was keen to see how they would get along.  Jack as usual got too playful too quickly and was sharply put in his place by the oldest dog.  I was glad that it happened, Jack needs to learn how to be normal with other dogs.  It's a shame there isn't a dog park here.  Or a dog beach.  You would think that for an island over-run with dogs, there would be more incentive to have one, a nice place to go where you can meet other people with dogs.  Even an obedience school...  Nope.  Nothing.  Don't get me wrong, I love living here, but there are so many things the Canary Islands lack.  And don't get me started on size 42 shoes!

Well, I'm off to bed now.  I've double locked all the doors from the inside.  There have been a few reports recently of attempted break-ins, two on our complex!  So I'll be sleeping with a baseball bat on one side of me and Jack the other side!  Although if someone tries to break in, Jack will probably just want to play with them!

Until next time...

Number Three

Oops!  I did warn at the start that I probably wouldn't be writing as much as I would like to.  My free time has been taken up by the series Desperate Housewives.  I'm on the last series now.  I've figured out that 7 previous series with twenty-two 45 minute episodes each, all watched in 4 months means that when I'm not working I've had just about enough time to eat, shower and walk the dog.  Yep, a dog.  Jack Dog.  A lot has happened in the last 5 months, when I'm not watching Desperate Housewives!

We heard about Jack through a work colleague who knew the couple that were fostering him for a few weeks.  He'd been found wandering on a beach near some bins.  No one knows if he was dumped there, born there or escaped from his previous home and ended up there...  But he has a lovely life now.  He was approximately 4 months old when we took him in, now he is 7 months and a smashing little fella.  A little, black mix of everything.

Me and my boyfriend also visited England a couple of weeks ago.  Apart from doing the rounds with friends and family (which was really lovely), it was shopping shopping shopping for me!  I stocked up on size 42 shoes (99.9% of shoe shops here only go up to a 41, which is a UK 7.5, very annoying).  I used up the other half of my luggage allowance on magazines of every variety - gossip, style, weekly, monthly, home, woman, even baby magazines!  Walk around the airport holding a baby magazine and it's amazing how different you get treated!  I'm not expecting by the way, just an interest of mine.  People think that's strange, but I say "you don't need to be a footballer to buy a football magazine"....

We have also taken up tennis a few times a week.  We have a court in our apartment complex and have always wanted to use it, but we found sport equipment very expensive here.  So we got the rackets from England.  Thought that paying nearly 50 Euros per racket here was a little steep just for a knock around like we do, so bought some £7 Donnay ones, bargain!  All started when the doctor gave us "the talk" about our lifestyles.  So we bought a smoothie maker and tennis rackets!  It's all going very well.  Although I've had to buy some more tennis balls already because a few of my serves have been lost over the fence.  I don't realise my own strength sometimes!

When we are not having all this fun, we are working.  Both in the same jobs as when I wrote last.  My boyfriend really enjoys his job and can see himself doing the same thing for years to come.  I would like a little more for myself.  Don't get me wrong, my job is very nice, the people are great and I know a lot of people would love to have my job - but I have a big empty space in my life, which when Desperate Housewives finishes soon, I will need to occupy with something other than tennis!  And no, not a baby either!  So, while I'm enjoying myself in the here and now, I am thinking of plans for the long term.  First step of the plan - learn Spanish!

Until next time...

Number Two!

So there is a second one!  It took me nearly two weeks, but here I am, writing again.

I've been working a lot since I last wrote, today is my first day off in 11 days.  So today was the first day I cleaned the house properly in nearly two weeks.  The fridge is empty apart from a couple of onions and a tub of butter.  And the only laundry I'm doing at the moment are work clothes.

But I'm not complaining!  I'm in Fuerteventura afterall, the sun shines every day and life is good.  I go to work in a little restaurant, earn my wages and come home.  There are hardly any bills to pay, no long commute to work, and work itself isn't stressful (apart from when 100 people all walk in at the same time to watch the X Facor!)...

Me and my boyfriend did venture into Corralejo two nights ago to check out the entertainment on offer.  We had a half decent night, although that was mainly down to the fact that we can make our own fun out of most situations.  Firstly we went into a bar, which offered a quiz.  We were given 10 minutes to write down as many answers as we could think of to a particular question, only to have the entertainer give away about half of them to everyone else as "clues" before the quiz had finished.  If we were the competative types, there may have been trouble!  But we laughed that off (we came second by the way!).  The drinks were a very good price.  We gave the bar and the entertainment 4 out of 10.

Then we passed by another bar showing a drag show.  The bar itself was very nicely decorated, lots of TVs dotted around for when the sport is on, and the drinks were reasonably priced.  The show was OK for holiday makers, including children.  But it's hard not to compare comedy drag shows to the high standard of those in Gran Canaria.  When the drag show finished at about 11pm, nothing was said about further entertainment, so we assumed the night was over for that bar and left shortly afterwards.  We gave the bar 6 out of 10.  By this point we were feeling like undercover bar critics!

We continued to walk along the main strip and were approached by quite a nice PR asking if we would like to come in to see the second half of a live band playing rock music.  I, in particular, like live music so we went in, found a good table at the front and ordered a couple of drinks, which were a fair bit more expensive than the other places.  But the music was very good so we don't mind paying for good entertainment.  There was a fairly good atmosphere in the bar and we left feeling like we'd had a good time!  At the end of the night we gave the bar 7 out of 10.  We thought it was a bit too dark!!

By this point we'd had our fun, we did have a look from the outside at one or two other places which were recommended to us, but they looked like any other karaoke bar that you would find in a holiday destination.  We had a very tasty kebab and went back to our 30 euro a night hotel.

The next day we wandered along the strip again and into the old town.  It was nice to see the pretty beaches and the quirky little backstreet bars in the daylight.  All in all, we liked Corralejo, but we don't feel like we are missing out by not living there.  We have what we need in Caleta.  We both have nice jobs, nice friends and enough bars, restaurants and shops here to keep us occupied.  We wont be leaving any time soon.

Although we will be looking at Jandia in a week or two to see what that's all about.  No doubt I'll be updating our scores out of 10 for the bars we visit!

Number One

This is the first time I have started anything like this.  It's more of a journal than a blog.  Something of my life at the moment, living the dream, to look back on in years to come.  Who knows?  Knowing me, this will probably be the one and only time I log on to this website, I lose motivation very quickly to keep this kind of thing up.

I spent the last 2 and a half years living in Gran Canaria.  I now live next door in Fuerteventura and have done for the past 5 weeks.  Hense the username, Canarybird.  Bird as in the actual Canary bird, I don't think of myself as a "bird".

I like it in Fuerteventura, it's very different in a lot of ways but also very similar to Gran Canaria, which I loved, most of the time!  Fuerteventura (FV) is a lot calmer, slower, older and civilised.  There's a sense of community and people seem to have been living here a long time, not like in Gran Canaria (GC), where most of the ex pats are generally younger and only stay for the Summer or a year or two.  So if a lot of British people have been here for many years and have chosen to have their families here, it can't be a bad place.  I'm giving it a go, no complaints at the moment.

I live with my boyfriend of 2 years.  Like all couples, we've had our ups and downs, but this is an "up" time, we finally have our own place after only ever sharing with friends, families and strangers!  We like our new life on a new island and we are discovering it together.  There are difficult things about living abroad.  First thing is obviously being away from the family and friends, missing nieces and nephews grow up, missing special occasions and not being part of stories that will be passed down the generations.  Other negative things include missing familiar food, shopping, going to the cinema, good TV and driving on safe roads.  More in depth details to follow when I incur a moment that I can't buy shoes in my size or fancy a KFC that I can't have - or probably more often than those, nearly get hit by a Spanish driver going all the way round a rounabout in the outside lane!

Of course, there are many more positives than negatives (why would I be here otherwise?), the weather, the simple way of life, the minimal cost of living...  The list goes on.

But for now, I'm going to continue to sit in a bar with WiFi, while I download all the episodes of Celebrity Juice that I can't watch on Spanish TV.  Plus I have to get up early(ish) tomorrow for my waitressing job in a restaurant by the sea.

So it's "adios" for now!  I'll write again soon - maybe...