I'm now in my 22nd year of practicing Family Medicine, and feeling its time for a change. So I'm taking my family (wife, youngest daughter) with me to New Zealand for 6 months, where I will be working in a small town medical clinic in the South of South Island.
Thursday, January 08, 2004
Kaikoura
I've blogged a bit on my laptop the last few days, but can't figure out a way to upload them, so I'm writing this in an Internet Cafe in Kaikoura, New Zealand, while the girls are taking a well deserved nap. {I will add the missing blogs later when I can}.
Tuesday: we got up, ate a great breakfast in the hotel, the Chateau on the Park, and on return from breakfast our bags had arrived (24 hours late). We had just enough time to check them in and then we and walked down through same park to Christchurch Hospital, where I had my final interview for my "Registration"- same as medical license- with the Professor who runs their residency program. He had few questions for me, was very nice and helped me through the paperwork. His advice for rural practice: "be careful of your distance with patients" in a small town. He also wanted to know if I was used to prescibing generics, since the NZ government contracts for a formularly of approved drugs, and Brand names can be very expensive. After the inteview, we took a quick look at the hospital- very nice, and like all hospitals the world over, shadowed by a giant construction crane building a new wing. Wandering down thru the rest of the park in to the center of town, we watched an Asian grandmother and her grandchild float past on the Avon River, part of "punting in the park". Visited ANZ bank where we were told to come back at 3 pm for an interview to set up a new bank account. We visited the Christchurch cathedral and walked through it- very interesting history- the stepple's been toppled 3x by earthquakes. Rode the Tram through the town center. The Tram is actually a guided tour of the town, and was quite helpful at getting us oriented. Visited the art museum, where an exhibit of "Japonese" influence on fashion was showing. The kimonos were quite beautiful. Liz like the dress designed like a Zen sand garden, with the pinned pleats. Capped off the afternoon (after visiting the bank again) with a walk through the Botanical Gardens on the way back to the hotel. This was wonderful- I was surprised and delighted at every turn. Turn the corner, and there is New Zealand native forest, turn again and a giant redwood tree, at least 150+ years old. Turn again, and a wonderful rock garden with herbs and small shrubs appears. One more turn, and a beatiful lilly pond, reminiscent of Monet's painting, complete with stone bridge. It was quite beautiful.
Yesterday we awoke in the hotel and reorganized; checking the viola and a bag of mostly SHOES to lighten our load. The shuttle came and we rode out to the airport, where we spent about 2 hours getting the check out and instructions on the campervan rental. I got to be first driver, since Vicki admits she does not know right from left. I tentatively drove out about 3 km. to a local grocery store, where we stocked. Then we took Route 1 north, out of Christchurch through stunning landscapes toward Kaikoura. Everything is browned here due to the heat and drought they are having, but the hills rise right up out of the plain and then there are sheep everywhere. We also saw herds of deer, and 1 flock of about 100 ostriches. Only saw 2 llamas. I drove for about 1.5 hours, which was as thrilling and scary as any driving I have ever done- my first time driving on the LEFT hand side, on mostly 2 lane roads, with huge lorries (trucks) coming the other way.
Then it was Vicki's turn. If my driving was a thrill ride, her's was a horror ride. Not because of her skills, but because the road soon turned into twisting, turning, switchbacked mountain roads and it began to rain. We were also following a tandem truck carrying a load of sheep. They do NOT have guard rails in this country,and I had great views over the edge down into many ravines on the way here. Liz was sleeping in the back (motion sickness) but kept getting woken up with shouts of "shoulder, shoulder" or "truck, truck". It was a relief to come down out fo the mountains and down to Kaikoura and the turquoise blue of the Pacific. We camped in a Top Ten Holiday Park here (its a brand name, like KOA), made ourselves a dinner of lamb steaks, "roasties" (pototoes, kumara, etc) and salad, and fell into bed, listening to the drizzle.
I was up at 0700 today to find a beautful clear, blue sky day with minimal breezes. We had a quick cup of tea, took our meclizine and headed down to the Dolphin Swim HQ here in town. (read prev. posts about this plan). Our check in was 0820. After a bit of delay waiting for the "0530 swim" to return, we had our briefing and climbed into our clammy wet suits, hopped on the bus to go to the harbour at South Bay. We went around the peninsula here to the North Bay first, but the dolphins we found there were swimming extremely fast- about 20 knots and not in a mood to play with us. So back around to South Bay, and Liz was a little green around the gills despite meds, but was a trouper in the 1 meter seas. South Bay was calmer, we went down coast about 15 km and found a pod of resting dolphins. Then, its jump off the back of the boat into the cold seas when the horn sounds, and swim out and "entertain" thge animals. There is no baiting or other enticing of the dolphins, which are wild animals. They will come to you only if you are of interest. The tour suggests things like diving down (see Dec 11th pic) or singing. Since I knew dolphins were intellilgent, I picked the first part of a Bach Partita to hum and sing. And zoom, here come 3 dusky dolphins up out of the green deep to look me right in the eye. My heart started pounding; what an adrenaline rush this was. I dived down and swam around and just enjoyed watching them on this beautiful day. We were called back to the boat after only 10 exhausting minutes, but then moved around and had 3 more similar swims with the dolphins. On my last swim I dove down and sang and had 3 of them circle me twice about 2-3 feet away. This place, Kaikoura, is really stunningly beautiful, much more than pictures can ever show. And this was certainly a wonderful experience. Liz prounounced it "very cool". We are going to rest up overnight and try to figure out where the wanderlust takes us next, as from this point out, we have NO PLAN (very hard for a High "C" person like me to deal with, so I will put on my "I" hat and be impulsive, inquisitive, and spontaneous. I am SO glad to be here. The last 3 days have been truly intense living.
I've blogged a bit on my laptop the last few days, but can't figure out a way to upload them, so I'm writing this in an Internet Cafe in Kaikoura, New Zealand, while the girls are taking a well deserved nap. {I will add the missing blogs later when I can}.
Tuesday: we got up, ate a great breakfast in the hotel, the Chateau on the Park, and on return from breakfast our bags had arrived (24 hours late). We had just enough time to check them in and then we and walked down through same park to Christchurch Hospital, where I had my final interview for my "Registration"- same as medical license- with the Professor who runs their residency program. He had few questions for me, was very nice and helped me through the paperwork. His advice for rural practice: "be careful of your distance with patients" in a small town. He also wanted to know if I was used to prescibing generics, since the NZ government contracts for a formularly of approved drugs, and Brand names can be very expensive. After the inteview, we took a quick look at the hospital- very nice, and like all hospitals the world over, shadowed by a giant construction crane building a new wing. Wandering down thru the rest of the park in to the center of town, we watched an Asian grandmother and her grandchild float past on the Avon River, part of "punting in the park". Visited ANZ bank where we were told to come back at 3 pm for an interview to set up a new bank account. We visited the Christchurch cathedral and walked through it- very interesting history- the stepple's been toppled 3x by earthquakes. Rode the Tram through the town center. The Tram is actually a guided tour of the town, and was quite helpful at getting us oriented. Visited the art museum, where an exhibit of "Japonese" influence on fashion was showing. The kimonos were quite beautiful. Liz like the dress designed like a Zen sand garden, with the pinned pleats. Capped off the afternoon (after visiting the bank again) with a walk through the Botanical Gardens on the way back to the hotel. This was wonderful- I was surprised and delighted at every turn. Turn the corner, and there is New Zealand native forest, turn again and a giant redwood tree, at least 150+ years old. Turn again, and a wonderful rock garden with herbs and small shrubs appears. One more turn, and a beatiful lilly pond, reminiscent of Monet's painting, complete with stone bridge. It was quite beautiful.
Yesterday we awoke in the hotel and reorganized; checking the viola and a bag of mostly SHOES to lighten our load. The shuttle came and we rode out to the airport, where we spent about 2 hours getting the check out and instructions on the campervan rental. I got to be first driver, since Vicki admits she does not know right from left. I tentatively drove out about 3 km. to a local grocery store, where we stocked. Then we took Route 1 north, out of Christchurch through stunning landscapes toward Kaikoura. Everything is browned here due to the heat and drought they are having, but the hills rise right up out of the plain and then there are sheep everywhere. We also saw herds of deer, and 1 flock of about 100 ostriches. Only saw 2 llamas. I drove for about 1.5 hours, which was as thrilling and scary as any driving I have ever done- my first time driving on the LEFT hand side, on mostly 2 lane roads, with huge lorries (trucks) coming the other way.
Then it was Vicki's turn. If my driving was a thrill ride, her's was a horror ride. Not because of her skills, but because the road soon turned into twisting, turning, switchbacked mountain roads and it began to rain. We were also following a tandem truck carrying a load of sheep. They do NOT have guard rails in this country,and I had great views over the edge down into many ravines on the way here. Liz was sleeping in the back (motion sickness) but kept getting woken up with shouts of "shoulder, shoulder" or "truck, truck". It was a relief to come down out fo the mountains and down to Kaikoura and the turquoise blue of the Pacific. We camped in a Top Ten Holiday Park here (its a brand name, like KOA), made ourselves a dinner of lamb steaks, "roasties" (pototoes, kumara, etc) and salad, and fell into bed, listening to the drizzle.
I was up at 0700 today to find a beautful clear, blue sky day with minimal breezes. We had a quick cup of tea, took our meclizine and headed down to the Dolphin Swim HQ here in town. (read prev. posts about this plan). Our check in was 0820. After a bit of delay waiting for the "0530 swim" to return, we had our briefing and climbed into our clammy wet suits, hopped on the bus to go to the harbour at South Bay. We went around the peninsula here to the North Bay first, but the dolphins we found there were swimming extremely fast- about 20 knots and not in a mood to play with us. So back around to South Bay, and Liz was a little green around the gills despite meds, but was a trouper in the 1 meter seas. South Bay was calmer, we went down coast about 15 km and found a pod of resting dolphins. Then, its jump off the back of the boat into the cold seas when the horn sounds, and swim out and "entertain" thge animals. There is no baiting or other enticing of the dolphins, which are wild animals. They will come to you only if you are of interest. The tour suggests things like diving down (see Dec 11th pic) or singing. Since I knew dolphins were intellilgent, I picked the first part of a Bach Partita to hum and sing. And zoom, here come 3 dusky dolphins up out of the green deep to look me right in the eye. My heart started pounding; what an adrenaline rush this was. I dived down and swam around and just enjoyed watching them on this beautiful day. We were called back to the boat after only 10 exhausting minutes, but then moved around and had 3 more similar swims with the dolphins. On my last swim I dove down and sang and had 3 of them circle me twice about 2-3 feet away. This place, Kaikoura, is really stunningly beautiful, much more than pictures can ever show. And this was certainly a wonderful experience. Liz prounounced it "very cool". We are going to rest up overnight and try to figure out where the wanderlust takes us next, as from this point out, we have NO PLAN (very hard for a High "C" person like me to deal with, so I will put on my "I" hat and be impulsive, inquisitive, and spontaneous. I am SO glad to be here. The last 3 days have been truly intense living.
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Arrival
It was 28 hours after leaving Cedar Rapids that we touched down in Christchurch. I figure "Sunday" for us lasted about 6 hours, before we crossed the date line. Four takeoffs & landings. I put on my old TED hose in LA before boarding the long flight to Auckland, and I'm glad I did. (Took a baby ASA also). Twelve hours is a long time to sit in the plane, even on Air New Zealand. We had a 747, very nice. All the headrests had covers on them: "Air New Zealand, the Airline of MIddle Earth". They have footrests, which I hadn't seen before- very helpful at preventing leg cramps and soreness from prolonged siting in one position. I also noticed that they had about twice as many attendants as most US airlines. And the food was very good. When was the last time any of us had airline food at all, much less good food? I slept most of the flight- about 7 hours. Vicki couldn't sleep at all, due to about 2 hours of moderate turbulance near the beginning of the flight. She watched movies and documentaries on the monitors all night long. The tea for breakfast was wonderful, as we watched the orange and crimson sunrise under a deep blue-black field of blue at 60,000 feet. Then there appeared a few craggy small islands in the sea below, havens for wildlife; then finally the green hills and fields of the North Island and we were skimming over the bay to land at Auckland.
Immigration went very well. Then we watched an entire, full 747's worth of luggage unload, and NONE of our bags on the carosel. That is a lot of bags to watch and never see one of your own. A check with the Air NZ agent reveals that United messed up and our bags are still sitting back in Los Angeles. The good thing about this was it made clearing Customs easy; they will just check out bags when the do come in and promise to deliver them to our hotel in Christchurch. The most interesting thing on arrival, and the most fun to watch, was the Biosecurity dog. A lady came in with a small beagle which proceeded to sniff all the luggage that came off the plane, looking for any biological material that might carry harmful pests into New Zealand. Non-native organisms are a really big problem in the ecology here, and an economic threat to N.Z. agriculture. The beagle went nuts over the little old lady in front of me, who happened to have "forgotton" the two apples in her backpack, which were promptly confiscated.
Then the last flight from Auckland south to Christchurch. I was able to look out the window at Farewell Spit, Golden Bay and Able Tasman National Park, and then the foothills and peaks of the Southern Alps appeared briefly before being lost in the clouds. The geography is quite wonderful to look at from above. We came in over the Canterbury plain, the large agricultural area on South Island, which is currenlty have a heat wave and drought. Most of the fields are brown.
Christchurch is called the "garden city", and the small part I've seen certainly deserves that nickname. Our hotel has wonderful gardens with koi ponds. After taking one of the 10 best showers of our lifetimes, we walked through one suburb to a local mall- to buy a few clothes to hold us over till the luggage arrives, and also to get something to eat. This is an area of very neat, one level houses, all with gardens full of flowers in bloom, subtropical tress and bushes, and a wonderful moist marine breeze. We hope to see more of it tomorrow, but for now, we are watching a cricket match on the telly, and tyring to stay awake at least until 6-7 pm so we can get on the local time here. Its good to be here, finally. Its been a really long two days.
It was 28 hours after leaving Cedar Rapids that we touched down in Christchurch. I figure "Sunday" for us lasted about 6 hours, before we crossed the date line. Four takeoffs & landings. I put on my old TED hose in LA before boarding the long flight to Auckland, and I'm glad I did. (Took a baby ASA also). Twelve hours is a long time to sit in the plane, even on Air New Zealand. We had a 747, very nice. All the headrests had covers on them: "Air New Zealand, the Airline of MIddle Earth". They have footrests, which I hadn't seen before- very helpful at preventing leg cramps and soreness from prolonged siting in one position. I also noticed that they had about twice as many attendants as most US airlines. And the food was very good. When was the last time any of us had airline food at all, much less good food? I slept most of the flight- about 7 hours. Vicki couldn't sleep at all, due to about 2 hours of moderate turbulance near the beginning of the flight. She watched movies and documentaries on the monitors all night long. The tea for breakfast was wonderful, as we watched the orange and crimson sunrise under a deep blue-black field of blue at 60,000 feet. Then there appeared a few craggy small islands in the sea below, havens for wildlife; then finally the green hills and fields of the North Island and we were skimming over the bay to land at Auckland.
Immigration went very well. Then we watched an entire, full 747's worth of luggage unload, and NONE of our bags on the carosel. That is a lot of bags to watch and never see one of your own. A check with the Air NZ agent reveals that United messed up and our bags are still sitting back in Los Angeles. The good thing about this was it made clearing Customs easy; they will just check out bags when the do come in and promise to deliver them to our hotel in Christchurch. The most interesting thing on arrival, and the most fun to watch, was the Biosecurity dog. A lady came in with a small beagle which proceeded to sniff all the luggage that came off the plane, looking for any biological material that might carry harmful pests into New Zealand. Non-native organisms are a really big problem in the ecology here, and an economic threat to N.Z. agriculture. The beagle went nuts over the little old lady in front of me, who happened to have "forgotton" the two apples in her backpack, which were promptly confiscated.
Then the last flight from Auckland south to Christchurch. I was able to look out the window at Farewell Spit, Golden Bay and Able Tasman National Park, and then the foothills and peaks of the Southern Alps appeared briefly before being lost in the clouds. The geography is quite wonderful to look at from above. We came in over the Canterbury plain, the large agricultural area on South Island, which is currenlty have a heat wave and drought. Most of the fields are brown.
Christchurch is called the "garden city", and the small part I've seen certainly deserves that nickname. Our hotel has wonderful gardens with koi ponds. After taking one of the 10 best showers of our lifetimes, we walked through one suburb to a local mall- to buy a few clothes to hold us over till the luggage arrives, and also to get something to eat. This is an area of very neat, one level houses, all with gardens full of flowers in bloom, subtropical tress and bushes, and a wonderful moist marine breeze. We hope to see more of it tomorrow, but for now, we are watching a cricket match on the telly, and tyring to stay awake at least until 6-7 pm so we can get on the local time here. Its good to be here, finally. Its been a really long two days.
Sunday, January 04, 2004
The Day Arrives
I'm writing this from the Air New Zealand terminal at LAX, waiting for them to call the flight. The last two days have been busy, to say the least. We've been "packing" all week; but didn't really put things into the suitcases until New Years Day night. Liz had a New Years Eve party and slept in late the next day. Leah and I went to see The Return of the King because I just couldn't leave for N.Z. without seeing it. Then we came home and started packing suitcases. We did this by getting everything out all over the living room floor and then trying to arrange it by "needed in the Caravan" vs. "needed in Winton later on". We got it down to 5 checked suitcases, and a carryon each, plus Liz's viola. Although two of the suitcases are huge. The universal packing list was really helpful, although mostly for being able to discuss what to take, what to buy there (flip-flops for example) and what we will just get along without.
After packing Thursday night, Liz stayed up till 4 AM and took Leah to the airport. She left at 5 AM and was back in Cleveland by 10 AM. Liz went to bed about 6. Then Friday morning the plumber showed up an hour early. Vicki had just put a load in the wash- we didn't expect them till 9 AM. I had to wake poor Liz back up and tell her it was "now or never" to use the bathroom. To winterize the house, we had the plumber drain all the pipes and blow them out. This meant no more water to wash clothes, house or hands. Worse, he put antifreeze down all the drains, so we couldn't even use the toilets. We cleaned up and finished preparing the place with a few runs to Vicki's mom's place in between. We set the thermostats to 50, turned the alarms on, said a prayer and left. The neighbors and friends will keep a close eye on the place. We have spent so much time planning and preparing that it is just a relief to finally be on our way.
I'm writing this from the Air New Zealand terminal at LAX, waiting for them to call the flight. The last two days have been busy, to say the least. We've been "packing" all week; but didn't really put things into the suitcases until New Years Day night. Liz had a New Years Eve party and slept in late the next day. Leah and I went to see The Return of the King because I just couldn't leave for N.Z. without seeing it. Then we came home and started packing suitcases. We did this by getting everything out all over the living room floor and then trying to arrange it by "needed in the Caravan" vs. "needed in Winton later on". We got it down to 5 checked suitcases, and a carryon each, plus Liz's viola. Although two of the suitcases are huge. The universal packing list was really helpful, although mostly for being able to discuss what to take, what to buy there (flip-flops for example) and what we will just get along without.
After packing Thursday night, Liz stayed up till 4 AM and took Leah to the airport. She left at 5 AM and was back in Cleveland by 10 AM. Liz went to bed about 6. Then Friday morning the plumber showed up an hour early. Vicki had just put a load in the wash- we didn't expect them till 9 AM. I had to wake poor Liz back up and tell her it was "now or never" to use the bathroom. To winterize the house, we had the plumber drain all the pipes and blow them out. This meant no more water to wash clothes, house or hands. Worse, he put antifreeze down all the drains, so we couldn't even use the toilets. We cleaned up and finished preparing the place with a few runs to Vicki's mom's place in between. We set the thermostats to 50, turned the alarms on, said a prayer and left. The neighbors and friends will keep a close eye on the place. We have spent so much time planning and preparing that it is just a relief to finally be on our way.
