More Reflecting...

So it's been a fairly miserable week around here. The weather, in true Shakespearean sympathy to my plight, has been largely rain. Though, NZ has some of the most quickly changing weather I've ever seen. "Four seasons in a day", they like to say, and it's not even close to an exaggeration. But all said, though it has cycled quickly through all four seasons, indeed, every day, the majority of it has been rain.

And why is this watery weather Shakespearean sympathy? Well...I was lucky to be the recipient of some nasty gastrointestinal ailment. At first we thought Norovirus, given the rapid onset, prominent nausea, and...endless trips to the bathroom, to put it politely. However, the high fevers and shaking chills would be somewhat atypical for Norovirus...and it turns out that Campylobacter is endemic here. So that's what I'm going with...Campylobacter diarrhea. Perfectly timed Campylobacter diarrhea, to take me out at the beginning of the week...no sleep, no food, and little more than a couple glasses of water over a 48 hour period. Thank the Good Lord for Victor, my wonderful Russian counterpart, who propped me up at work with some sweet IV Fluid love. And an extra thanks to the Good Lord, for it not being a busy week on-call. The hospital itself is hopping, but A&E (ER) has been relatively quiet at night. And, a third and final thanks, as I don't think that I passed on this bug to anyone at work (it's kind of awkward to work at the hospital, have a GI bug that could be highly contagious, and not being able to call in because there is no one to cover you). I lost most of the skin on my hands to washing, but I haven't had any patients or other staff get sick (yet...it's a little early for Campylobacter).

Anywho, enough whining:-) I got to lose some weight, and probably still will lose a little more (tummy isn't quite up to eating a full meal yet), which means I'll look great in my bikini this summer:O

This sick time left me somewhat delirious this week with a lot of curious thoughts running through my head. We've been very analytical, of late, of life in America, having finally spent time somewhere else where we aren't solely there to work. If you ever want to really upset your thinking, especially if you have some conservative leanings, may I suggest doing 3 things, in this order: 1) Leave the United States...not to a third world country, but to somewhere else in the first world, 2) Read "1984" (or re-read it), and 3) Read "A Brave New World". It really is a fascinating way to entirely re-see life in America. Other parts of the world really don't live like us. As an American doctor who also just moved over here pointed out to me, "Materialism, on the scale you see in the US, is just not possible here". And it's true. We just live on an entirely different scale than they do here...and I think everywhere else too. We don't do thing...after all, we work so much more and don't have time to...we just have things that we've work so hard to get. It's odd that Orwell and Huxley, being post-WWII British writers, both envisioned the inevitability of the dominance of American culture around the world. Orwell, as the Military-Industrial Complex that needs to be fed by constant war, and Huxley, as the mindless pursuit of pleasure through consumerism (All Hail Our Ford!). I won't go into Orwell, as that's bound to piss some people off, but it doesn't take long outside of the US to realized that Huxley wasn't that far off. I've thought of myself as fairly anti-consumerism, but I am a consumer-extraordinaire. High-speed Internet access is a luxury. Cable television? Maybe 5-10% of people have it here. Vegetarianism? This is a supreme luxury when 50% of the average household income is already spent on food, and there is so little that grows here in the wintertime...buy foreign, own enough space to grow your own food indoors, or eat meat.

And I think all of the lack of things that people have here, though calling a lack may be inappropriate, makes people do more. As Zhiling has been seeing, making her rounds in the local Nursing Homes, even 90 year old people still do things...they are walking around outside, enjoy the sun for the 10 minutes that it's out. They are out in the garden. They are out together. Maybe that's the bigger difference, maybe it's not just the doing something, but not having a 120 different channels to watch makes them go outside and see their neighbors, even if it's only to avoid boredom. We just go invited to a "Roof Shout" yesterday, which is somewhat reminiscent of an Amish barn-raising...we didn't actually do anything, but when someone is building a house and their roof goes up, they have a party to invite all the future neighbors over. It's a great idea. Going back to the 90 year old in the nursing homes...that kind of tight community persists; grandma is out playing cards with her friends. Grandpa is down at the RSA (Returning Servicemens' Association) having a drink before he's back to the nursing home. And if he's too decrepit to make it to the RSA, his friends bring a drink in to him (imagine that...drinking in a nursing home)...or the people at the nursing home get together and enjoy each other's company (which is just an odd idea after seeing nursing homes in Boston, where people seem to go to die alone, surrounded by people doing the same).

The transition back is going to be a hard one. Maybe we'll have to find a small town to live in:-)

Anywho, enough angsty rambling. We'll be back and posting on a more happy note later:-)

New Zealand Travel Tip #3: Wash off the fruit you buy at the store...there probably aren't pesticides on it, but who knows what is?

This New Zealand Life

Our blog today, for those fans of "This American Life", comes to you in 3 acts. The first, "Zhiling Misses America", is fairly self-explanatory; the second, "No Pads, No Helmet (no brains), Just Balls", will bring you our tale of the most exciting thing to hit New Zealand since The Lord of the Rings. And the third, "Is That Placenta on Your Hands?", is an entertaining and informative look at life in rural Southland.


ACT I
"Zhiling Misses America"

It is interesting to listen to the news of America from outside of the country. The whole US of A seems to be falling apart in many ways, and there is a certain amount of guilt brought on by being far away while this happens...like the child who lives ten thousand miles away when their nursing-home-bound parent becomes ill.

Zhiling was sitting knitting her wool socks one day (as she has done frequently since moving here), when she realized that she could be listening to something. Now, on occasion before moving out of country, we would listen to "This American Life" or some other podcast from NPR, while on the road or something... And this is what struck her to listen to at that moment. There is something pleasant about listening to Ira Glass and his Midwestern accent talking about everyday life in America...and even more so when you're far away from it. Soon, TAL was playing ALL OF THE TIME. And then, that wasn't enough anymore..."Planet Money" came next..."Talk of the Nation". And oh, goodness, "Science Friday". Zhiling even ventured away from NPR to listen to Peter Jennings on ABC News...but once was enough of that. So now, topics of politics fill our home more than when we actually lived in the country that we were talking about. The Republican nominees all sound either bonkers or have no chance of being elected. Obama...he sounds good when he talks, but can he do anything (we both just watched the jobs speech last night on YouTube)? The economy...what else can you say? Thank God we're in New Zealand, where their dollar will probably equal our own before long. Ahh...but always back to Ira Glass. Always good for a decent story, a good laugh, and some good ole American nostalgia.


ACT II
"No Pads, No Helmets (no brains), Just Balls"

So, we always thought that we were the only country to not call Soccer "Football". NOT TRUE! New Zealand also calls it soccer because if you said football, what you'd be talking about is Rugby. And Rubgy is here in a big way right now. New Zealanders eat, drink, and breath this sport.

For those of you (like us) who have no idea what Rubgy is, think of it like a cross between American Football and Soccer...maybe with a little Hockey involved. Basically, large sweaty men with thick necks all try to get a, basically, football-shaped ball from one side of the field to the other. There is a goal line to run across, and goal posts to kick the ball between. You can run forwards with the ball, but you must pass backwards. You can even pass backwards once you've been tackled...so the action never really stops. One time when the action does come to a halt, is when, for whatever reason (we certainly couldn't figure it out) one decides to form a "Scrum". A scrum seems to be when all of the huge men lock their necks and shoulders against each other and basically push until someone falls over...like Red Rover, but more violent, I suppose.

In any event, the World Cup of Rugby is currently being held in NZ. And this is HUGE. Think of The Olympics coming to every major city in the US all at once. The All Blacks are the team to cheer for. They are New Zealands biggest sports celebrities. We, however, don't actually work with that many native Kiwis (seriously, we've only met one doctor who was born here so far)...and we didn't have hundreds of dollars to buy tickets to see the All Blacks, who only play in Auckland. So Scotland versus Romania was our ultimate World Cup experience. We were finally persuaded to come to this game by a part-time doctor that Zhiling works with who hailed from Scotland. When we arrived, the stadium, being in Invercargill (about the most Scottish sounding name, you could name a city) was a mass of people wearing kilts, playing bagpipes in the streets, and painting their faces with Scottish flags. As we compared our own Scottish heritage, it turns out that Claire, the "Scottish Doctor", was actually 100% Irish, just born in Scotland; Zhiling was, oddly enough, NOT Scottish despite growing up in a town with a Highland Festival (Alma is Scotland USA); this left Paul to be the most "Scottish" because, as Zhiling pointed out, his ancestors were very promiscuous and had gotten up to Scotland at some point in time.

Despite our apparent lack of Scottishness, we cheered for the home favorites, who, amid the crowd of clearly intoxicated men in Kilts and little children spending hours stomping on beer cans, pulled off a victory after a game that was too close for the crowd's comfort at times.




ACT III
"Is That Placenta on Your Hands?"
To round out our weekend, we travelled out to the sheep farm of one of the practice nurses at the GP office. It is Lambing Season in Southland, and lambs are popping out left and right.

After a lovely home-cooked meal with her family, we pulled on our gumboots and Keri and her husband Rich took us out in a trailer attached to a fourwheeler to the sheep pasture (one of many). Here, where the ewes were all giving birth to twins, we attempted to track down a sheep in labour. After several near misses, we found what we were looking for...amniotic sack starting to protrude from the backend of a sheep. Rich, despite his bad back, jumped off his fourwheeler, wielding his sheep-hook (yes, like you see on pictures of Little Bo Peep), and snagged the poor, contracting sheep around it leg, downing it immediately. We watched as two small hooves began to protrude from the poor ewe's backside. While we sat watching, expecting Rich to do his things, Keri suggested that Zhiling get down there and pull the lamb out. So...Zhiling pulled off her coat, rolled up her sleeves, and put her OB-GYN training to use. Lamb legs are very slippery, but after a bit of tugging, out popped a little lamb. But wait, there's more...another head appeared, ready to pop out into the world. Zhiling was instructed to reach on in and pull it out...by the legs...which had not yet appeared. After a bit of fishing around, yes...inside a sheep, and a little help from Rich who reached in flipped the legs around, another a lamb entered the world. We cleaned out its nose and mouth and placed it next to its exhausted mother's head for her to clean the rest of the amniotic sack from it. Awesome.

Aside from bringing new babies into the world, we went around picking up the dead baby lambs who had died the night before, stacking them in our cart...awwwww. We also searched around for orphan lambs who had lost track of their mothers, and those who couldn't feed, and brought them back, either to their mother or to be hand-fed at the farm house. We got a chance to feed these ones later:-)


All-in-all, it's been a pretty "New Zealand" weekend. We feel thoroughly steeped in the culture of the Southlands. It's a small world down here (as we found out at the Rugby game, where we met 2 more people from our hospital that we hadn't planned to come with and saw 4 different patients), and that's kind of nice. Where else would someone from work invite you to go to a Rugby game...or invite you to their sheep farm? Where else would someone you work with (in a hospital, mind you) have a sheep farm?

New Zealand Travel Tip #2: When Lambing: always get the feet out first.