Sunday, November 29th, Week Eight of Locum Tenens in New Zealand

Time is flying by. I don’t have the cold weather to help mark the days. There is definitely a surreptitious sense of “things aren’t the way they usually are” in my brain. I keep forgetting about Christmas, even though last night was the office Christmas Party here!

Last weekend there was an agricultural “show” in a little town nearby called Kirwee. New Zealand calls fairs “shows.” It was a beautiful day, so I found my way there and wandered around. The Speed Sheep Shearing Contest was the highlight! Interesting fact: instead of bottles of hand sanitizer everywhere, they had bottles of sun screen. The ozone layer is thin here and burns happen quickly to these fair-skinned folks.

The commentator was hysterical! Calling out each body part to go….”now he’s at the shoulder!…” It has to be done within 2 minutes and perfectly. The sheep stays calm and then saunters off looking very skinny!

How sweet are these children in their little hats.

The clinic schedule has kept me busy. In addition, I hosted a wine and pumpkin pie party for the office to celebrate Thanksgiving since New Zealand doesn’t have that holiday. Trying to make a pumpkin pie in New Zealand was a bit of a chore! All told, I baked 5 “crown pumpkins” with varying flavors of what I think a pumpkin should taste like. Nothing canned here to be found. Then I tried to make a butter pie crust which I am very, very bad at. The crust burned badly, so then made leaf-shaped bits of pie dough to ring the pie to cover the burned edges. That looked not so good so I bought spray-can whipped cream (in addition to real cream) and decorated the edges around the leaves. In New Zealand this canned stuff melts right away. What an ugly pie! A complete disaster. So I made another one with frozen “sweet pie crust” which looked a bit better. The whole event was quite a project. The party was great! One of the nurses made a beautiful Pavlova just so I could have the real New Zealand experience.

Guests claimed that since they have no idea what a pumpkin pie is supposed to look like they never would have noticed…I’ll eat Pavlova any day.

Yesterday I drove into Christchurch to explore the town. Hagley Park was the goal of the day. It was amazing! This park is a combination of Central Park, Como Pavilion, Lake Harriet Rose Garden, and the Minnesota Arboretum all rolled into one. There are Botanical Gardens with a Rose Garden that blew my mind. I walked 6 miles! I also ate my first ever Yorkshire Pudding! You can tell the Canterbury Region was settled by the English.

CHRISTCHURCH

These are three VERY interesting drinking fountains!!

Last evening I walked to the Pub one block away for the Office Christmas gathering (the Darfield Hotel and Pub, to be exact). The Jukebox was old with 60’s and 70’s music. By the end of the night one of the staff was using my leg as her guitar. Not sure how that happened!

So other than taking a quick drive today and deciding it was too windy for my Sunday hike, that brings things up to date!

Stay safe everyone.

Going west from Darfield towards Arthur’s Pass

He po pai (have a good night),

Lynn