Auckland Zoo and the Beach (Auckland Day 2)

Another fun-filled day in New Zealand's biggest city. 

We started the day with a great continental breakfast at the hotel, then head out to the zoo.  Today was the first dry and sunny day we've seen in a very long time and it being a Sunday, I think everyone in Auckland and the surrounding area decided to join us at the zoo.  It was crowded, but not anywhere near as crowded as the Woodland Park Zoo gets.  Right when we got there, we saw one of the stars of a Kiwi evening soap opera that we all watch each weeknight.  Blake walked up to him and confirmed it. 

After the zoo, we headed out to a nearby beach, where the kids collected shells.

Then, we came back to the hotel and cleaned off and walked back into the downtown area for a Mexican dinner.  I'm exhausted.

Tomorrow, should we head under water?

The Sky Tower (Auckland - Day 1)

The kids have finished term 3 of school and now have 2 weeks off.  I was able to get 2 four day weekends during these two weeks, so we (really, I) decided to spend the first one in Auckland.  Auckland is NZ's largest city and about 2.5 hours North of Otorohanga (mostly on 1 lane country highway roads). 

We're staying at the Quadrant Hotel, which is across the street from the University of Auckland and walking distance to the waterfront and the Sky Tower (taller, but much younger than the Space Needle).

Having arrived today at about 1pm, we decided to check out the Sky Tower.

We had High Tea at the Orbit Restaurant, which turns 360 degrees per hour.

There are people who jump from the sky tower and walk around the ledge.

We're now in for the night.  Tomorrow, we're going to look for animals in Auckland...

Stormy Beaches

Hi everyone.  Sorry it has been so long since I posted.  Despite the vacationy sound to our trip, I'm actually having to WORK!

About that...  I'm seeing about 25-30 patients per day.  There's 4 docs at my practice (there's actually more, but only 3-4 there at one time).  One of us gets there at 8am and sees all of the urgent walk-ins and same day bookings for the morning, one of us takes an early lunch and covers urgent patients during the regular lunch hour and another takes the afternoon urgencies and keeps the clinic cell phone to answer urgent questions until 8pm.  If there's a 4th doc there, we just do regular bookings all day.  One day, while I was doing the lunch cover, I sewed back together 2 fingers (on 2 different people) and poked a hole through a fingernail all within an hour.  It was actually kind of fun.  The most challenging part has been trying to learn which medications are subsidized (basically like being on the NZ-wide formulary) and what they're called.  For example, Bactrim is called Trisol, Omeprazole is Losec, and Azithromycin is only subsidized in the treatment of chlamydia.  No Z-Pack abuse here!

In the past week, some crazy guy with a swastika tattooed on his face, high on P (what meth is called here) stole a motorbike, drove to the local pub, tried to hold it up with a rifle, had the gun taken off of him by the local pub patrons (who knew him well), and fled into "the bush" before being caught by the police later in the night.  Check it out.

The kids are doing well in school.  Blake recently turned in a poster about dogs and Liza and a group of kids at her school won first place in a local competition between schools to create stuff out of recycled materials.

I finished a shirt I made for Liza yesterday using dice to create random striping.  She picked the colors.

Liza's new shirt

  The woman in the background is Heather.  She works at the front desk of my clinic and while literally everyone has been uber-welcoming, she has a snarky sense of humor that is similar to mine, so she's one of my favorite.  She's also a knitter, which makes her A Okay in my book.

Today, we went to Raglan, which is a cute little town that is about 1 hour 15 minutes NW of us on the coast.  It's where a lot of surfing happens.  I almost decided not to go today because of the weather warnings for high winds, rain, thunder and possibly tornadoes, but I'm glad we did.

Liza wasn't feeling well today and by the time we made it to this beach, she pretty much stayed in the car.

And that was me trying to escape a wave.

Well, I hope you all are doing well.  Will try to post more soon.

Disco and safe from the earthquake

First I want to just reassure everyone that we are nowhere near the earthquake that New Zealand early this morning and didn't even feel it.  It looks like there was quite a bit of damage for some people in the region, though.

This week in the (not so) quite town of Otorohanga, a disgruntled patient threatened the clinic, there was a gas leak that shut down main street for a few hours, and some teenagers blew up something large causing an explosion nearby fortunately not hurting anyone.  I think I've seen at least half of the kids in Oto with colds and coughs this past week.  And I got my first paycheck!

Liza and Blake's school had a Disco on Friday night.  I think the kids had lots of fun. 

Blake and a couple of his new friends

Today, we went to Kawhia (pronounced Kaffia because "wh" in Maori is pronounced "f" and the kids played on the beach.  I'll try to post more about that tomorrow.