well, i haven’t posted in ages, huh? i’ve been all over the place so I barely even know where to begin on here….in brief: spent 3 days on the beautiful little island of Waiheke with its gorgeous beaches with stunning blue water (I’ve never seen so many shades of blue in one place before)… Weirdly enough, a few days before, when i emailed the Watson Foundation to tell them that I had arrived in Auckland, they informed me that another Watson fellow had just arrived in Auckland as well (they opened our emails successively by coincidence). So, she called me and then we realized that we were both in Waiheke, this random little island on the Hauraki Bay in new Zealand. We ended up meeting up at a playground overlooking the beach and talking before I headed back to Auckland. Wonders never cease!
Then, Mom showed up for a week of crazy travel. i have to say that i was really impressed by how much energy and enthusiasm we managed to keep up– believe it or not, Mom even went hiking with me and surprised me by being the one who wanted to keep hiking through the rain! we spent the first day just visiting places in Auckland: the sky tower and the parnell rose gardens. then mom took me out to go swimming with the dolphins on tuesday! fun! i have some great photos from that, which I’ll get around to posting someday. we flew to Christchurch in the South Island that night and started our tour of the South Island the next morning: a whirlwind of visiting Mt. Cook, Queenstown, Milford Sound, Franz Joseph Glacier and then taking the TranzAlpine train for a beautiful ride back to Christchurch. We flew back into Auckland at night and then the next day toured Rotorua ( with its spas and geyers and boiling mudpools) and Waitomo Caves, which are filled with little glow worms that light up the inside of the cave like little stars. She left on Monday to my sadness. it’s weird saying good-bye to family again and to think that there’s another 5 months before I’ll see her again :(. As you can tell, it was a very fast-paced trip, but we had a wonderful time!! I’ll put up pictures soon…
This week, I also started meeting with people here in NZ. I met with the director of the Health Emergency Management of New Zealand, who works on the ambulance system here, and then with a woman who works at the Center for Social Health and Outcomes Research in Auckland. She’s specifically interested in the use of emergency departments as the sites of brief public health interventions, which is one aspect of my work at the ED at CHOP that I always liked: that you can use the ED as a place to teach people about things like bike safety or alcohol. I’m going to look a little more into some studies she recommended to me regarding that phenomenon and maybe post more on it later. Today, I spent the day in Whangerei near the Bay of Islands. One of the doctors up here agreed to let me conduct a focus group here on Emergency Medicine for my research, so I was able to set up a meeting with doctors and nurses here….went really well. Again, I’ll post more on that later.
Ok, I’m heading to the Bay of Islands tonight before I head back to Auckland…
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