The Glorious All Blacks, Hollyford, and Horses

So for those of you who don't know (and how could you not), our home-team heroes, the All Blacks, have gloriously defeated all of their foes and won the Rugby World Cup.  This will be the first time the World Cup has come back to New Zealand in 24 years (it's an every 4 year event, like the Olympics).  The All Blacks won the original World Cup when the event began 24 years ago, but have not won it since...until now.  The All Blacks have come back from the brink and eeked by the feisty French to bring glory to a New Zealand in need of a good event (after earthquakes and other such tragedies that have crushed their spirits this year).  Yay, the French lost!  Oh yeah...the All Blacks won too:-)

Aside from New Zealand reveling this moment of Rugby satisfaction, we have also been having our own adventures...though primarily separately.  No, mom and dad, we're not finally sick of each other; it just worked out that way.

Zhiling has been spending ALL of her free time ATTEMPTING to study hard (she disagrees with the assessment of the situation) for her impending board exams.  This has left her, and Paul by extension, with little time for adventures.  However, Paul, by a mistake of scheduling, found himself obliged to go off trekking without Zhiling.

Paul found himself in the company of several of his co-workers trekking on the Hollyford trek, a beautiful trail through the Fiordlands in the West of the South Island.  While the entirety of this tramp would take far too long, we set ourselves on the more modest goal of making it to the first cabin of the trail, the Lake Alabaster Hut...only 20kms in.  So over the course of 2 days, we saw a variety of beautiful trails, gorgeous vistas, and splendiferous waterfalls, all while walking a mere 20km (12miles) per day...if that doesn't sound bad, trying doing it with a heavy pack on, uphill.  Nice!

While Paul was away spending bonding time with co-workers, Zhiling went to Pizza Hut and got herself a ham and pineapple pizza which Paul would have never eaten. Yum!  Then she unabashedly went to the video store next door and rented not one, not two, no.... six ultimate chick flicks to watch over the weekend.  These included such great movies as Burlesque starring Cher and Christina Aguilera, Sisterhood of theTravelling Pants 2, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Nights in Rodanthe, Prozac Nation, and Bright Star. Now Zhiling was planning on studying very hard that weekend for her Boards, which she ultimately did.  Though there was always plenty of time to watch at least 3 movies an evening.   Later on, she did vacate the house and went to visit Claire on her mini farmlet, who gave her her first set of horse riding lessons on Claire's horse Milo.  She also got to watch sheep get sheared...how long did you think we'd be in NZ before that happened:-)

Aside from various distractions, work has continued on.  Paul got his first opportunity to push thrombolytics ("clot busters") for an ST-Elevation MI...or almost got the opportunity.  As the medication was being drawn up, the chest pain disappeared, and the EKG normalized...gotta love aspirin-naive people.  Instead of pushing a potentially dangerous medication to open up a clogged artery, Paul got to get in a fight with a cranky cardiologist about transferring a "stable" patient instead...well he wasn't having a heart attack RIGHT then...anymore.

Zhiling, on the otherside of the hospital-practice complex, has been exceedingly frustrated by a constant stream of blood coming from every patient's various orifices...mostly coming out in the urine.  New Zealanders, for some odd reason, seem to leak blood a lot...out of noses, has been the typical place, but over the last week, it has been out the urethra.  Endocrinologic problems (hormones) also seem to be the issue of the week, with a prolactinoma and some hyperthyroidism for fun.

And the adventure continues!  Tomorrow we begin our week of holiday.  We will be tramping on "the finest walk in the world", the Milford Trek.  This high altitude trail leads through the heart of the Fiordlands (the Hollyford Trek is in the valley below the Milford) and ends at Milford Sound, a scenic sea inlet surrounded by waterfalls.

New Zealand Travel Trip #5: Don't break in your new hiking boots on a 20km/day hike.

Who's Grant And Why Are We On His Nob?

So we have settled into life here in New Zealand.  Paul and I have been on a couple random adventures as of late.  Perhaps to start with the most bizarre; we recently saw the Red Hot Chili Piper's in concert.  No that was not a typo...  indeed the Pipers not Peppers.  Imagine Transiberian Orchestra, except with bagpipes.  Who knew a bunch of middle-aged men (with great calves) ... in kilts could really rock the house .. with bagpipes? Claire yet again lassoed us into another bizarre Scottish adventure.  When we asked who these guys were, she said "They're real good.  They play pipes, and drums, and sh*t."  That got us right away and we bought tickets.  These guys were the real deal.  The drummer was the fastest drummer in the world (he actually holds the current world record).  The guitarist played AC/DC... all with bagpipes!   Just to go over a couple of the songs in the RHCP set list, they played everything from Amazing Grace, to Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars.  Though perhaps our favorite rendition was Queen's We Will Rock You.  There was a lot of disturbing hip gyration, which made me glad that the kilts were long enough, though just barely while they were on their knees doing solo's... with BAGPIPES!  It was a great show.

Aside from spending time with Tracey (the other American Locums) at the RHCP concert,  we also went over to her house for a welcome party for a second American locums coming to work in Balclutha (another hospital down the road).   Yasmin and her boyfriend were FOB (fresh off the boat) and we got a chance to ingrain them with our 2 months worth of extensive New Zealand knowledge.  We had a delicious homemade dinner made by Tracey and shared some local wines... and when we say share some local wines we mean watched several bottles consumed within a short period of time.  The fast disappearance of wine bottles may have strongly been attributed to a presence of an Irishman in our midst, Shamus.  We finally got to meet the famous Shamus, who we will soon get the pleasure to know better as he is starting to work at Gore.  More to follow...

On our own we have been a little less adventurous, communing in our NZ home.  We have continued to reap the joys of the indoor garden that we planted in the sun room.  Multiple heads of lettuce, rocket herb are now at an edible state.  Paul and I have also started growing peas, tomatoes, green beans, cilantro, and basil from seed.  These have started to sprout nicely, and with the weather improving we will soon be able to plant them outside.  However, all of our gardening has not been successful, as our worm compost is now devoid of worms as they all died.  Whoops!  Lesson learned.  The whole concept of wet to dry material one should take seriously.  We likely drowned our worms.  The ones left over probably got overheated after we left them in the sunroom.





We have managed to keep up with our exploring, we went to the Blossum Festival in Alexandra.  We saw our first parade in New Zealand.  It seems parade's in New Zealand largely consists of trucks.  Boy they like their trucks here.  The beginning of the procession consisted of about 10 mins of big rig trucks, one after the other, after the other, from EVERY local business.  There were also some floats that decided to show up.  And of course bagpipe bands, four to be precise.  The Scots are everywhere.  After that we were rained on by the unexpected (or should we say always expected) weather of New Zealand.  We dashed around and looked at arts and crafts stuff.  We watched big men chop wood with large axes... competitively.  Who knew there were that many ways to cut a log in half?  We ended the day going to Monteith Beer Company and munched on some fries and warmed ourselves up with some Ale, cheers!

And now to Grant's Nob.  And what a Nob it was.  Right near Dolomore Park which we have formerly blogged about, there is a large hill with a beautiful trek up the side.   After a steep incline over a short distance there is a wonderful view of the valley below where Gore is located.  We found a spot that we definitely will return to for picnic in the future.








As well, locally, Brown Trout season has opened.  And Gore is the Brown Trout capital of the world.  Paul went on a boys trip out fishing with Karl the CEO, and Victor (his Russian counterpart in the hospital).  He managed to catch nothing though Victor share from his bounty.  We had two brown trouts that we baked and ate.  They were pretty good.  We'll be out later fishing.

To end off our latest week, we spent a lazy Sunday at home, watching the All Blacks brutally pound the Australian Wallabye's (who's actually scared of a team called the wallabyes?)  in the semi-finals.  The World Cup madness is still raging here.  This will reach a fever pitch next week as the All Black's (our home team heroes) battle ?the French.  That's right the French got into the Finals.  Now if the French win, NZ will know eternal shame.   Side Note: I would also say the All Blacks won in the most number of bloody noses during this latest semi-finals game.  I have never seen so much blood in a professional sport since Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield's ear.

New Zealand Travel Tip #4:  Don't leave your worms in a warm sloppy mess in the sun room...even if they smell too bad to keep in the house.