Napier japiers

Hello!!!

^that's a rather exuberant "hello" because I've just been on a wine tour and got myself slightly tipsy.... to begin at the beginning:

I am in Napier! Anna and I got here on Thursday night at about 8pm after a 5 hour journey on the nakedbus (which wasn't that bad because of the gorgeous scenery to look at!), rocked up to Stables Lodge, which I can highly recommend because of its incredibly friendly staff, ultra-cool dorms and kitchen with hanging rack and gas hobs!!! Be still my beating heart...

We didn't do much on Thurs night apart from cooking ourselves some tasty tomato risotto and drinking wine, then wobbling our way up some insanely high ladders into the comfiest bunkbeds ever, and falling asleep with a pleasing feeling of having begun the weekend early. (I love these bunkbeds. Mainly because they have a shelf on which to put one's hearing aids and glasses, which I now regard as essential after a good 4 weeks of worrying about how to keep said objects safe in a rickety bunkbed with gaps between mattress and bed!!)

On Saturday after a massive breakfast (I thought I was greedy when it came to breakfast, but apparently in Germany you can have omelettes, toast and honey, AND fruit and yogurt?!?!), we headed out into Napier which was beautifully sunny :D

After coffee at Groove Kitchen Espresso - which was worthy of its Rough Guide recommendation - we ambled along the seafront marvelling at the blue sky, then did the obligatory STEEP walk up Bluff Hill for some fantastic views across the bay...

and then back down into town via the Botanical Gardens. These weren't very exciting but they are Napier's oldest park, so definitely worth a look. Napier itself is beautiful and very Art Deco - it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1933, and then rebuilt in the style of the times with wide streets and beautiful buildings, and for some reason lots and lots of fountains. (I believe they symbolise rebirth.)

Alas the sun went in by about 3pm and it was getting chilly, so to get warm we had a LATE lunch at Café Divine: a fairly tasty steak sandwich on gf bread - mmm - then went back to the hostel for some chilling out time, via the supermarket and some shops! After dinner (sausages and kumara mash with apple sauce, mmm) we went for a little walk along the harbourfront to digest, then headed home for another lovely sleep.

Today (Saturday) we headed out to explore more of Napier - and get coffee. Thus fuelled, we set off on our wine tour with Vince - this was an afternoon of great fun and much wine! There were 7 of us on the tour and a great mix of ages and nationalities (Germans, Yanks, NZers, the odd Brit...) We visited 4 wineries in all;

at the first, Salvare, we had a very good tasting session and the guy was very informative about wine - I now know you should hold the glass by the stem and swirl the wine, then smell it and mutter things about aromas and bouquets. Then drink it and roll it around your mouth - NOT like mouthwash but more elegantly (this I failed at; think goldfish), and murmur things about elegance and finish and errrr mouthfeel??

I can now taste the difference between an oaked and unoaked Chardonnay - massively prefer the unoaked - and can namedrop things like Merlot and Cabernet.... I think.... planning a couple more wine tours in Nelson and Queenstown so by the end of this trip I'll be the best wine-snob ever!!

At Te Awa it was more of the same, except a bit more informal and with added banter about hot water bottles with the lady at the bar (who was also from England and also baffled by the lack of central heating in NZ).

The third vineyard had a cat :)

2 vineyards later I was flagging because I was rather hungry, and several tasting glasses on an empty stomach is not the best idea ever.... I have also learnt another interesting tidbit: when you drink wine without food, your saliva breaks down the tannins and so the wine tastes pretty bitter and dry... whereas if you're eating, your saliva is busy breaking down the protein in your food so the wine is left alone to taste awesome. Fortunately at the last vineyard a cheeseboard was provided and I fell upon it in ravenous tipsy fashion. mmmmmmm cheese.

Ooh! In Napier it is warm enough to grow lemons! It's a very Mediterranean climate here, as evidenced by the t-shirt weather (see pics of our walk above).

After this it was back to town where we decided coffee would be very useful in sobering up - then we headed back to the hostel for dinner via the supermarket. Now we're just slobbing about - Anna is reading and I am blogging. Yay for netbooks!

In other news: in Welly last week I managed to visit the WETA workshop! Unfortunately I hadn't had my coffee that day, I look a little rough....

(heehehehe)

Roz xxx

Welly weekend fun

Hello!

Have had a rather good weekend, spent mainly with Anna who is great fun! On Friday night she came over for dinner. She is staying with a very nice Muslim family who have asked her not to bring pork or alcohol into the house, so I went the whole hog (harhar) and got some fantastic sausages from Moore Wilsons, and a bottle of red. We had these excellent sausages with kumara mash, fried garlicky mushrooms and salad - nom nom. Anna had brought a lovely creamy yoghurty dessert with berries on the bottom - kind of like trifle but with no cake....) We then made some new buddies in the hostel (other Germans who had been eyeing Anna's dessert until we offered them the leftovers!) and all proceeded to drink whiskey and coke out of bowls (no clean mugs left). Then we ended up going out to Mighty Mighty which is a pretty brilliant club/bar on Cuba St where we danced the night away - brill times!

Despite collapsing into bed at about 3am, I still woke up before 9am on Saturday and dragged my sorry butt out of bed for a sausage and egg butty (using the sausage leftover from the night before). This did the trick with the hangover and I was soon well enough to head out into the gorgeous day without screaming "ARRRGH! MY EYES!" Which is a good job because it was like this - mmmmm.

click this to read the poem!

I went to the "underground market" at Frank Kitts Park - despite the shady name it is a lovely event selling loads of handmade and beautiful goodies! I bought myself some thermal leggings and EXCELLENT socks there (angora, possum fur, merino wool and cashmere. I'm never taking these babies off). And a few presents - hint hint Izzy ;) After spending too much money, I went for a stroll along the harbourfront, taking lots of photos, then snuck to Meow AGAIN (now up to 5 out of 9 on my loyalty card, this is terrible!) for coffee and a lovely ginger slice. After this it was time to catch the train to Redwood to see John and Liz!

You may remember this lovely couple (Liz is the third cousin of my friend Leila) from my first weekend in Wellington, when they came to collect a desperately homesick English girl from her hostel and take her to a concert and ply her with tea and tasty food! and family times with 5 year old twins and an adorable almost-2 yr old. I mean, look at her:

(she's blurry because she's jumping - she always jumps! How she has that much energy I do not know....)

Had great fun playing with the kids and eating some v. tasty chicken and kumara. After the kids' bathtime the grown-ups (John, Liz, their friend Miriam and me) had some delicious baked apples and custard and played Carcassonne! Which Liz won. I came third.... addictive game!

Miriam kindly gave me a lift home and I crashed into bed pretttty early (before 11) after a good Skype home to find out how things are. Everyone is staying positive, yay! Love you all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <----family cuddles

This morning I Skyped home from bed - oh the luxury.... Sunday morning is always good for internet here, no-one is awake and clogging up the wifi! Then after breakfast I met up with Anna who fortunately has the same devout attitude to morning coffee as me, so we began our day with a trip to Ernesto's on Cuba St for cappuccinos. We also got me a friand (no idea what this is apart from almondy gluten-free awesomeness) and a brownie for Anna! After nomming these, we headed off to Zealandia which is a giant wildlife park surrounded by a Jurassic-Park-esque fence to keep the bad domestic animals out and away from the endangered wildlife within. Apparently your average house cat can jump 1.8 m or something crazy - errrrk!

Normally it's really expensive to get in but today was "Wellington Open Day" so it was gold coin entry - i.e. $1, i.e. 50p. The cable car to get up to Kelburn was also gold coin! Boom!

We had a great walk around it - didn't really see any wildlife but it was beautiful scenery and I kind of felt as though a velociraptor was about to burst out of the bushes and pounce on me. Exciting times!

Then after a bit of tapas in a pub in Kelburn on the way back down the cable car, we headed back down into Welly and Anna had the excellent idea of getting the bus to Island Bay for a walk along the beach! So glad we did this, it was gorgeous! All in all I reckon we walked about 7 or 8km today, good work. Work off all the cake and booze....hopefully....

Now I am back in the hostel - have had a lovely Thai red curry takeaway from Aroy on Courtenay Place (only managed half, so half will be lunch tomorrow! Pretty good for $11!) Currently polishing off my cuppa tea and a cheeky bit of Lindt chocolate. mmmm.

love from Roz xxxx

(arty pretentious photo taken from one of the Te Papa sculptures...)

tutti frutti oh sushi

WARNING: This will make most of you jealous.

I had sushi for lunch today. I googled "best sushi in Wellington", picked a good one, made my way from the hospital to 100 Willis Street (a good walk to get the appetite roaring), and got this:

for $12!! (£6)

and nommed it all sitting on Cuba Street watching the cool kids go by. but there was no cooler kid than me with my sushi ;)

Cuba Street also has a really random but funny water sculpture which splashes most tourists - wise Wellingtonians give it a wide berth!

In other news.... haematology is the same old, same old (though am going to try and pluck up the courage to do some BMs on Mon).... and Anna (a German medical student) and I have met up, hit it off, and both turned out to be planning trips to Napier next weekend.... so we're planning an epic road trip! Thinking of hiring a car as it'll be cheaper. Rather scared of driving but Anna says she will do it all if necessary. She spent 3.5 weeks before her elective campervanning it around NZ with her boyfriend. I nearly exploded with envy at this....

Tonight Anna is coming for dinner - I have bought sausages and wine, as the family she is staying with are Muslim and have asked her not to buy pork or alcohol. I don't know how she is managing! So tonight should be a reprieve for her!

Not yet sure of my weekend plans but definitely the Sunday market.... and perhaps revisiting some of the coolest shops on Cuba St... there's a very nice bag in one of them ;)

big love,

the Sushi Monster xxxx

mammoth update!

Currently in Catherine's (the bone marrow transplant co-ordinator at Wellington Hospital) car on the way to a nurse education programme dinner meeting in Palmerston North, which is about 2 hours north of Wellington... so I thought I would bring the netbook and write a blog entry to use the time better :D check me!

I've not updated for a while have I – bad Roz! Am only just over the jetlag (it hung around for a while without my realising, manifesting in an insanely strong desire to go to bed at 9pm and waking up at 5am; most out of character), plus settling in has been a full time job...

Last Friday, after our coffee & cake, Cat, Tess and I returned to the hostel and slobbed about a bit before having some more nibbles (no room for a full dinner!) Then we went out on a bar crawl of Courtenay Place, as detailed in Catherine's blog; I don't have much to add to her account of the night, apart from TWO trips to Burger King (once for me and Tess, then back again for Cat on the way home!!! oops) and my vicious hangover the next morning, due to heavily mixing drinks. It's not my fault! I was bought a G&T!!

On Saturday we all got up fairly late and I had the restorative egg on toast. Then it was off to explore more of Welly despite the rain – we started off by buying our tickets for the rugby that night, then going up in the cable car (a Wellington institution) to the Botanic Gardens – unfortuntaly it was just too wet to walk around these, so we ended up going to Kelburn (a pretty suburb of Wellington up on the hillside) for....err..... more coffee and cake. Back down in Wellington, we headed to Te Papa to see the colossal squid and experience the earthquake simulator. The earthquake veterans Cat and Tess can vouch for its accuracy!

Then we had just enough time to put on a gazillion layers of warm clothing and gulp down some yummy spag bol before heading off to the rugby. It was rather wet so we came over all English and sat under our flowery Cath Kidston brollies. Not being a sports player or follower of any description, I had difficulty following the match and spent my time asking Cat (the rugby fanatic) annoying questions like, “What's the difference between a scrum and a ruck?”, “Why isn't this more like Quidditch?”, “Which way are we playing?” and “What colour are we?” I believe that by “we” I meant Wellington Hurricanes, having formed a loyal attachment to the city in 7 days!!

Unfortunately they lost so I decided I liked the Crusaders better.

After the match we squelched out and got on the first bus back to the hostel, where we went for hot showers and then retired to the comfy sofas with hot water bottles and laptops, and later mint hot chocolate (thanks Tess!)

On Sunday the girls had to leave early to get their ferry to Picton and bus to Nelson where their new placement is – I failed to wake up in time to see them off (no surprises there!) but we'd said goodbye the night before. After breakfast Paula (an Irish girl who is staying in Wellington for a week before taking up a graphic design job in Queenstown) and I went off to my favourite activity – the Wellington city market! This is a lovely artisan food market held every Sunday in Chaffers Dock, down by the harbour. Next to it is a fruit and veg market with cheaper-than-Grianger prices.... Didn't really go there this Sunday because it was raining good and proper, so being under cover was the main priority! This led us to take shelter in Te Papa again; I went round the rest of the museum, while Paula and her friend Caroline went to a comedy gig upstairs. There are some really good bits: an exhibition about the young refugees coming to New Zealand which had me tearing up like a hormonal fool, and a lot on NZ history of immigration and their part in the world wars. Met up with the Irish again downstairs and toddled off to Ernesto's (which rapidly becoming my second favourite cafe in Wellington, after Meow). There we had some rather delicious food – my bean chilli with chicken and chorizo was exactly what a rather rain-soaked Roz needed :)

I returned to the hostel to bake banana & white choc muffins – a culinary challenge, as the kitchen is mainly used for the heating of pasta and various sauces in jars. I located enough implements though, and within an hour had these:

winning me much admiration from the pasta-eating boys.

Two of these muffins havc been my breakfast on Monday and Tuesday, washed down with a coffee from Brooklyn Bakery (a bakery and coffee shop on my way to work). The others have been distributed among hostel inhabitants! Who says you can't buy friends with cake??

Monday:

Ward round – good now I know who the patients are and why they're in – there's 3 in isoltion because of stem cell transplants (for various things: mainly acute myeloid leukaemia, and one paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria) and marrow meeting which was about as fun as anything involving microscopes can be.

Monday afternoon I was naughty and sacked off – went for some lovely pad Thai at a restaurant round the corner from my hostel, then Paula and I went for a walk around Wellington which unsuprisingly culminated in Ernesto's again, with THIS cake for me....I actually couldn't finish it and had to save some for later!

After waddling back to the hostel I hung out in the common room on my netbook and studying leukaemia...before making dinner with Paula and Caroline (pasta with bacon, courgettes, mushrooms, chilli, anything else we had...), drinking a very nice Carbernet Merlot, and eating more cake!

Tuesday:

Spent the day in 2 clinics – bone marrow transplants in the morning, general haematology again in the afternoon.... upon my return home via Moore Wilsons (NZ equivalent of Waitrose, really rather nice) I decided to remedy all the recent cake with a visit to the swimming pool. I went off to Freiberg Pool (on Oriental Bay) with Paula who had had the same idea! I had a lovely hour's swimming and then treated myself with a sit in the sauna for half an hour. There were loads of Indian men in there who decided to make it as hot as possible and laughed good-naturedly when I cracked and nipped out for a break.... I went back in for another 10 mins though. Cos I is well 'ard, innit.

Lobster-like from the roasting, and with that lovely heavy tired feeling you only get from swimming, I mooched contentedly back home and nommed down a baked kumara (NZ sweet potato, delicious) with hummus, goats cheese and mushrooms. And salad. Pretty healthy compared to all the cake...

Wednesday

Today I was naughty and sacked off the morning to go to the Botanic Gardens in the cable car with Paula; it was beautiful even though this is NZ winter. Lots of ducks on the duckpond, and cheeky little birds too.

After our amble around the gardens and a quick visit to the Cable Car Museum (complete with beautifully restored original cars), we headed back down into Welly to – surprise surprise – Meow! Brilliant lunch there – cranberry, cashew and potato rosti with pesto and rocket for me, and some more excellent cake (choc fudge brownie).

In general I'm starting to love Wellington; it's a very cool and quirky city, full of snake-hipped youths in drainpipe jeans and baggy t-shirts, swerving effortlessly around on skateboards (insane number of skateboards here!) Their female counterparts are all rocking the geek chic look with big glasses and cute woolly hats (it's winter over here, remember?) Cuba Street – which I have yet to explore properly – is the coolest street in the city withs loads of vintage and coffee shops. Oh and everyone – EVERYONE – drinks coffee. Most people I see in the mornings are clutching coffee cups; all the doctors in the hospital run around with coffee in one hand and stethoscopes in the other; my supervisor breaks off morning clinic to go and get coffee. I'm in heaven.... squeeliac coffee heaven.

<< I just wish this wasn't happening the day AFTER I LEAVE!!! how annoying!?

The hostel is starting to feel like home as well; I was thinking of moving (I'm a “grass might be greener” girl), but as David pointed out, it would be a waste of the muffin-bought friends to move, and if there wasn't anything wrong with this hostel I might as well stick with it. So I am. Wheee. The only con is the rather slow internet, but at least it's free.... They're a friendly bunch here. Most people are staying for a few months, getting jobs and then leaving to travel some more. My room-mate Andy has just got a job in a cafe after about a week of hunting and CV-sending and is rather pleased :)

Now I am in the car on the way to Palmerston North to this nurses' dinner I'm gatecrashing. Should be a good experience; I hope everyone is nice!

Wondering how to go about exploring the area some more – I really want to do a long weekend to Napier and Taupo, both of which are supposed to be gorgeous. Napier's about 4 hours away – I'm trying to decide whether I should rent a car and drive it (errrrk), or put up with the train/bus. I guess I could always visit them from Auckland but that's a bit of a trek....and I have other plans for Auckland! (including a visit to friends at Tauranga, the Coromandel coast, and surfing at Raglan as recommended by Georgina!)

I also want to work out how to get down to Queenstown (where I'm learning to ski, if there's any snow...) I was going to go via Christchurch, but after Tessa and Cat's grim tales of the town, I'd really rather not.... So my new plan was to head down the west coast instead, overnighting in Blenheim or Nelson (for the WINE darling. It is the Marlborough region after all). Then down maybe to Fran Josef to see the glacier/walk on it! An overnight stay there, and go on down to Milford Sound to peek at the gorgeous fjords before heading inland to Queenstown at last. No idea if that's a reasonable itinerary – it would certainly take me about 3 days....

Any thoughts peeps?

Much love to you all – Mummy – happy birthday for last saturday!

Izzy congrats on finishing exams!!! Michael – hang in there! Tim – say hi to all your Japanese friends for me; I'm really sad I can't meet them, especially the clever little boy who can play the piano!

Congratulations to all my newly-created baby doctor friends! So proud of you all :)

xxx

settling in....?

This placement is shaping up nicely. I finally have a timetable so I know when to go in (and when to skive, heh heh) and I'm starting to remember everyone's names now, and the registrar sends me to buy coffee when there's nothing to do! (Good coffee too, yum.) ALSO finally getting used to the Kiwi accent - they pronounce their vowels very oddly! Given that my understanding of speech is mainly based around the vowels, and lipreading, this has proved difficult to say the least, but it's looking up.

The timetable goes like this:

Monday

8.30 -10.30: Ward round

12.30: marrow meeting (basically looking down a microscope at all the cells, cancerous or otherwise)

Tuesday

8am – 12.00: bone marrow transplant clinic (and the marrow biopsy clinic runs alongside this so I should have an opportunity to stick a needle in someone's back at some point.... :S really not keen on the prospect I have to say!! I saw one today and it made me sweat nervously just watching. Ugh

1.30 – 5 – general haematology clinic (because the whole of NZ is about the size of a regular UK trust, the doctors have to be pretty general, hence Prof Carter does both oncology and bleeding disorders, whereas in the UK the two sections tend to be separate.)

Wednesday

11.30 micro meeting

12.30 – 1.30 journal club (where we discuss any exciting new studies... and free lunch is normally provided. Boom.)

Thursday

8.30 – 10.30 – ward round

10.30 – 11.30 MDT (multidisciplinary team meeting) and case discussion of tricky cases

1.30– 5: clinics again! But I am hoping to just go to the medical student teaching instead and make friends :)

Friday

8.30 – 11 Venous thromboembolism clinic

11.30: x ray review

1 – 2: journal club (more exciting new journals and again free food! huzzah!)

There you go!

To family and other fine, upstanding members of the public: I will be attending everything! Yes!

To everyone else – I will be skiving the afternoons! Yes!

(Not sure which I will be doing yet... The registrars on the ward have pretty much encouraged me to skive by writing me a list of coffee shops and cocktail bars..)

I returned this afternoon to find Cat and Tess in my hostel! While I am not glad that they have had such a terrible time (see Cat's blog for details: http://beta.offexploring.com/cashton/blog), I'm very glad to have some Newcastle medical faces about :) We've just been for some excellent, all g-f cakes at Meow, with a pot of tea for the girls and coffee for me. (Am determined to make the most of being in the caffeine capital of New Zealand.)

We're off out for cocktails later – at Emma's erstwhile workplace – and tomorrow there is a rugby game on so we shall be watching that at the stadium! How exciting! I've not really explored Wellington properly yet (apart from comprehensively mapping the good food shops) so it'll be good to get some official tourist things in. Particularly looking forward to Te Papa (“our place”) Museum of New Zealand, which has an earthquake simulator and a giant squid. (I have already been to see these for an hour on Wednesday night, but there is a LOT to do there so I look forward to returning!)

Other details of Welly life:

This hostel is good but I may still move to a smaller one (http://www.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/Worldwide-Backpackers/Wellington/5199/reviews ) after a recommendation from someone here.

I have also finally scored an extra blanket – HURRAH – rendering the hotty botty unnecessary. Starting to sleep fairly well now that I'm settled, though still exhibiting early morning waking... oo- er!!

Totally going back to the farmer's market on Sunday; this time they have a game stall! BOOM. Have decided to sample as much wine as possible here – the Marlborough Pinot Noir that I bought on Wednesday was absolutely spiffing. I had half a bottle without realising because it was so drinkable, and so GOOD....mmmm. Must get some white fish as an excuse to get a Sauvignon Blanc...

haematology hospital shizzle

****guest blog squatting here!!!! recipesonapostcard.com seems to have b0rked, so I have taken the liberty of posting my elective traveller type blog here for a bit while its home is fixed! so don't worry, the new activity does NOT mean I am having a lumpy relapse...touch wood ;) ****

Following on from my last post on recipesonapostcard.com......

If I'm honest, I'd kind of forgotten in the excitement/stress of all the travel that I was actually supposed to be doing some medicine at some point. Still slightly discombobulated, I started at the hospital on Monday - got the induction into the library, name badges, immunity checks etc, then was escorted to the Wellington Blood and Cancer Centre, which is v. similar to the Freeman Centre for Cancer Care, but with better weather (so far).

The hospital is in Newtown, about 20 mins walk from my hostel, maybe even less - I'm not sure yet as I tend to just wander along holding my coffee and marvelling at how not-cold it is for DEEPEST WINTER. (Seriously. I can get away with a shirt and cashmere cardigan. As IF you could walk to the RVI in that in December!!)I didn't manage to meet my supervisor (Prof John Carter) on Monday, but I did meet a fair few registrars and nice people on the ward. THe ward is just like any chemo ward - rather like my old one in fact, but with better views! On Tuesday there was a Bone Marrow Transplant clinic in the morning, general haematology in the afternoon. I mainly just hovered about smiling at patients...

My supervisor is a lovely chap but one of those incredibly busy people - however today he found time to buy me a coffee, and sit down with me and go over a timetable for me :D

It basically involves a fair few clinics, bone marrow biopsies (apparently I should be able to do some! because they're "easy, just a bit crunchy" :O!!!!!!!!!!!!!! eek!), time on the wards, journal clubs, lab work, etc. So I should be kept busy which I love! whooo.

This afternoon I was allowed to do whatever I wanted, even explore the coffee shops (my supervisor is a coffee aficionado like most Wellingtonians), so I skedaddled and located a shop very much like Waitrose but quintessentially Kiwi... ran around like a kid in a sweet shop again, buying wine and ingredients for dinner!

Dinner was NZ lamb with rosemary and thyme, roasted with a medley of veg (yams; unidentified squash, possibly kabocha; red peppers; onions) and salad. Mmmmmm managed to get the lamb perfectly pink and nommed it all down with salad and a fantastic Marlborough Pinot Noir. Life is good!

Loafing around in the lounge at present chatting to people - there's a good mix at this hostel: school trips, here to go to Te Papa (museum of NZ, very good); long term stay people who are travelling/working; and your regular travellers. And me. No idea what category I fall into - the long-stay people have normally been here for about 3 or 4 months! So I don't really count. But I do have my own bag in the fridge now...

(Oh, an update on the hostel situation: I stayed at Base Wellington for 3 nights, then decided that I couldn't hack the kitchen... no OVENS or GAS HOBS. or free wifi! How could I cope?! and it wasn't that social cos there were a lot of gap yahs and also it's affiliated with Kiwi Experience, so most people were just stopping off on their way through. So I upped sticks to Wellywood which has WAY better social areas and free wifi.)

Er that's about it so far - I get mega-tired in the evenings, probably a combo of lipreading the Kiwi accent, and remnants of jet lag, and just the travelling malarkey. So probably off to bed soon! Maybe a cuppa Earl Grey first.... I'm honestly starting to feel better the more ingredients/food stuff I accumulate!

much love and thanks for your facebook comments etc :) xxxx

Welly at last!

Hello again!

I arrived in Wellington on a rather rainy day (11^th June) at about 1.30pm – I was v. tired and actually alone for pretty much the first time since I got on that 4.10 National Express coach. Hence the first afternoon/evening did not go well (much weeping ensued, and even a gin & tonic produced a negative effect). After a Skype call home and a hot shower I felt far better, and took everyone's advice to go to sleep! This helped even more, and I woke today to lovely sunshine and a sense of “HURRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!”

First I skyped home again and then toddled off to find myself some gluten-free breakfast, which Meow provided extremely well. Eggs Benedict on gluten-free toast with cappuccino? HELLO!

Thus fuelled like a atherosclerotic Spartan army, I then set off in search of the food market. Once I found it I nearly fainted, because there turned out to be a stall selling pretty much only goats cheese! BOOM! Excitedly ran around like a small child in a sweet shop buying kiwis (massive home-grown ones), satsumas, ingredients for butternut squash-tomato-goats cheese-sage risotto. Everything's pretty cheap too - $6 for 2 bags of veg/fruit, which is probably as cheap or cheaper than the Grainger Market!

I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring some more, buying a phone with sim card (because it turns out you can't put Vodafone sims in locked Orange phones – doh), checking out the library, making plans for travelling down the South Island. This evening, by a massive stroke of luck, I got myself invited to a concert with one of the loveliest families ever (my friend Leila's third cousin Liz and her husband John and their 3 adorable kids, Simon, Micah and Annika – apologies for any misspellings!) Despite all having horrible colds, they took me to a children's concert and back to their house for a cuppa tea, and then Liz took me out for dinner in Wellington! A bit of family time was just what I needed and so I am very grateful indeed :)

Also Liz drove me up Mt Victoria, a look-out point from which you can see the whole of Welly like a glittering sparkly carpet round the bay! It's soooo pretty – and again I forgot to take any photos. I really am going to have to step up my photographic game.

Now am sitting in bed about to Skype home again, then get some zzz's before going to learn about haematology tomorrow. Whoop! Feeling much more settled; big thanks to everyone who's sent me a calming facebook message – much appreciated! xxx