It was a hectic, intense, but after all, very enjoyable 10 days with my Canadian family as you can read in my previous post.

Auntie Val en Grandma Didi got on the plane back to Canada and we were off to Rhodes. Rhodes is a majestic island, home to a little piece of heaven called ‘Kolympia’. Mum and dad had found a great Workaway there, with a super cool German musician called Doris. Doris needed help with restoring her enormous garden to its original state (which is heavenly, not ghostly, which is how we found it). And little did she know that gardening is my speciality! Seriously, I’m the bestest gardener ever! I ran, ran, ran and slept and ran again and ate and played and by the time I was finished, the garden looked much better. I don’t know how I do it – it must be a gift. I don’t know what mum and dad did all day long, but they always came home looking tired and silly with their muddy clothes and branches sticking out of their hair.

The best part about gardening at Doris’s is that when our 5 hours of work were done, we could go to the beach!  Five minutes from the house was this beautiful turquoise, tourist-free beach! It was such a treat! I could chase my friend Ronnie, Doris’s dog, for miles, on an endless marshmallow-sand beach without bumping into any bikinisunscreen lady – except once, but it was funny!

But the funniest time was when mum got stung by a bee. Her ankle was bigger than her face! The three of us worked for about two hours that day – for health reasons that affected all of us deeply…
So, dad decided that the best cure for an oversized ankle was to take mum on a date – for the first time in six months! It was also their six month anniversary, but they only realised that when their mouths were full of grilled octopus – silly potatoes.

While gardening is my specialiest specialty, it is also very demanding work, so after a week of dirty nails and lower-back sunburns, I was super relieved that we were going to our own apartment. But most of all I was so excited to finally meet my other Auntie, Ioana, from Canada! The new apartment was next to the rhodes airport and mum had been looking forward to  skidaddling her way into her best friend’s arms. But with her truck-sized ankle (it was getting bigger everyday, that wasp was on some mad steroids). So she couldn’t come get Ioanna with us. Thankfully I am super unique and therefor easily recognizable, otherwise Antie Ioana wouldn’t have found me and dad!
Dad was a bit stressed about having to pick up Ioana without mum, because Charlie had told him what crazy papaya she was. But, on top of being a crazy papaya, auntie Iana is also great at making new friends feel comfortable and Mum did get to jump into her best friend’s arms after all. In a kitchen, which is not as romantic as an airport but it still was ok!

In good Ioana tradition they laughed and talked and drank the ‘alcoholz’ and red inapropiate stories from their notebooks. It was a spectacle wonderful to watch! Auntie Ioana was the best, seriously. I had a crazy huge diarrhea incident that night and she cleaned it all without waking up mum and dad and she left the kitchen smelling better dan a fairy’s fart… Like everytime someone comes to visit mum and dad are a tiny bit worried, workwise, but Auntie Ioana was on vacation from her amazing yet tiresome job as a 3D Animator and late sleep-ins were part of the deal. So mum and dad worked in the morning and had ‘Ioana fun’  in the afternoons.

My favourite day was when we discovered this wild beach and swam like blow-fish and took the wrong route back and ended up walking for 10 kilometers (!) with NO WATER in the burning sun. Thank god we found an icecream vendor at the 9th kilometer.
All in all, Ioana arrived white as toiletpaper and left redder than the reddest thing you can imagine. I will miss sleeping with her – she smells much better than mum and dad!

But, all good things come to an end and in my case they also come with a scary, fast boat. I have no choice but to get onto. The ferry from Rhodes to Turker felt more like riding a crazy bull than anything, but thankfully it was only for an hour. We are now in the mountains of Kalkan, living with the dogversion of the Stark family. Except if we were present in Game of Thrones we’d just troll everyone and stay home and not leave!

Ciao Banana