Fun weekend!

So it was my first full weekend on the north island! On sat I slept in a bit and then went to breakfast at this cafe in town, which was delicious! The I headed out to hike the mountain that overlooks te Aroha. I thought it was going to be a leasirly stroll up to the top. Wrong! It was basically a 2 hour hike straight up the whole time, jeezo! By the time I got to the top I was knackered and I still had to come back down! But it was actually really pretty and the view was amazing, so it was totally worth it! Just beautiful! By the time I got back down it was mid afternoon so I just followed signs towards more nature things to see what popped up. There was a random track that I drove down which wasn't super interesting except that I met a horse at the other end of it so that was cool. Then I drove to a waterfall nearby and hiked up to the lookout point there. It meant another hike for my already tired legs but it was a really nice hike along a river and the falls were very pretty! By then it was evening so I was too tired to bother cooking so I got a Chinese takeaway and chilled the rest of the night.

Sun I got up early (not early enough to watch the rugby, but all blacks won!) and headed to waitomo caves to see the glow worms. It was really pretty seeing the and then I did some cave climbing and rafting in the dark which was really fun too, though quite cold! I even climed up a waterfall to get out, though initially I was a little terrified! On the way home I saw a sign for a kiwi place so I pulled in there and was just in time for the kiwi feeding! So I got to see her running around and even attack the handler when he was trying to feed her, pretty cute!! And I got to see a tuatara!! Which was awesome! By then it was later so I finally had to head home and now just doing some vet prep before bed and work tomorrow! 

In Te Aroha

I'm now on the north island staying in a little town called Te Aroha. It's right by a mountain and is actually really pretty! On Monday I went to Hobbiton, which was amazing! So much fun! Then I still had some time to kill so I hiked around a bit on the mountain and it was so pretty. 

This new practice is pretty cool. It's really big and they have lots of branches relatively close by so I've been to 3 now and there's another in Te Aroha that I may visit at some point. It's the end of repro season up here so I've been doing some CIDR programmes catching the last non-cyclers for the AI people. I also got to see a sequestrum removed from a heifers leg which was really cool! I wanted to see more but our grand idea of a TICA type anaesthetic was dashed when we realised that we didn't bring a giving set, and me giving her 20ml bonuses of the infusion wasn't really working out, so I became th anaesthetist. Which was good in a different rate so now I Am better at field anaesthetic monitoring. Also the sequestrum we removed was 11.5cm! Bananas! I've been vaccinating some calves as well and today I got to do a liver biopsy, so that was pretty cool. Today it's raining, typical! The Internet where I'm staying has been a little slow so that's been slightly irritating since I'm trying to work when I get back every night, but oh well! I need to figure out what I'm doing this weekend, probably something close by.

Hopefully the weather holds out!

First week on the South Island

So I've been on the South Island for a weekish now and it's been so lovely! My friends friend came and got me and have been so great, I was really lucky to have them here! My week of seeing practice has been so much fun, a nice combination of being busy but I've had some down time to do navle prep at the same time. It's been really fun spending time with locals and just being a part of the family more or less, also they have a great dog who is my new bff so that was great! I got to go to a calving, a botched castrarion, did some repro work, full herd health plans, and basked in the greatness of the rotary parlour, which is just the best invention. Everyone is super nice and the beer is fabulous. We also had some local wine from a client of there's which was really good. I've had some NZ cheese and made everyone snicker doodles, which they loved, introduced my hosts to tapatio and bagels and cream cheese, and just had a great time down here.

Sat we went to akaroa which was a French settlement and is just a really cute little coastal town and it was beautiful! We had fresh fish a chips (a MUST try everyone said) and walked around for a bit. Then we went into Christchurch and walked around. It's crazy that they are still trying to rebuild after earthquake 5 years ago and there's still rubble everywhere. Hopefully if I ever come back I'll get to see what it will eventually become! We also had these amazing yoghurt cone things where they mix the fruit in with it, so good. And There's a cool part of the mall that is all shops in storage containers because they all needed a place to go after the quake and they kept it, so it was a creative way to stay in business. All in all it's been a short but great week down here, and now I'm on my way to the north for 2 weeks!

I also should. Let that air NZ safety video is the men in black song but about airline safety, amazing!

Heading to NZ!

I'm finally heading to NZ for 3 weeks to do some EMS! I got to the airport nice and early, to find that my flight had been delayed because of a medical emergency. It wasn't terribly late, but it was gonna make everything a little tense. Fortunately Emirates is a really lovely airline, so they assured us that midflight they would come up with plans for us all, so that was nice. Once we landed there were people at the gate to collect us with new boarding passes and they walked is all through security and to the gate, so that was no problem! 

The flight to Brisbane was surprisingly not too bad, I think cuz it's broken into more manageable times it hasn't been terrible. There also was cheap internet so I did some vet prep when I wasn't trying to sleep. When we got to Brisbane we basically disembarked, went through a weird mini security, and then re-boarded the same plane. Security I suppose!

I finally made it to Auckland after lots of traveling and made it through bio security with no troubles, though they decided to give my boots a bit of a scrub in the name of biosecurity. Then I made my way to the domestic area of the airport toured to Christchurch, and then I'll finally be

Done traveling! Looking forward to a proper sleep at this point and doing work tomorrow!

Week 1 of public health down!

I'm done with my first week of public health, and its been another pretty chill week. We learned how to use the captive bolt gun as well as some free bullet ones, so that was pretty interesting. We also got a chance to teach the 4th years like we were taught last year in the PM room. It was more teaching rather than quizzing since they haven't had some of the lectures yet, so they were a bit lost, but I had a good group so it wasn't too bad, they were pretty keen! Also I leave for NZ in ONE WEEK!

Also I should point out that I'll be away for my birthday, so if anyone was going to send me something I wont get it for a bit since I'll be away, so probably best not to in case it gets sent back! Everythings more or less sorted, just need to pack!

Onto Public Health

I'm done with the clin path bit of this rotation and now on to public health! Should be fun, the professor who runs it is hilarious and so fun to work with. We'll be doing things like visiting abattoirs, doing some PM room stuff, teaching 4th years (which will be really weird), I may get to do some stunning, so we'll see! Clin path was a little boring to be honest, it was mostly microscope work and basically being a pathologist, which isn't really practical to real world type of situations since I'll actually have a patient when I'm running bloods, but what are you going to do, can't argue too much with a week of half days! And I'm collecting all my stuff and preparing for my trip to NZ, leaving in less than 2 week! Now I just need to figure out what to do!