SHE PASSED!!!!!

Congratulations to Andrea who having passed her most recent exam is now one third of the way towards becoming a bona fide certified board approved medical physicist!!!! YAY! Please join me in sending her massive congratulations. Way to go Andrea!!! Woop woop!

The Catlins Weekend

Drea on a boardwalk in a Catlins estuary

Hey All,

So to celebrate the fact that Drea no longer has to spend all of her free time studying for exams we decided to take off last weekend for a little getaway to the Catlins. We rented a little cottage on the beach in Papatowai. Papatowai is a little beach town not far from where I did the DOC trip back in August. I'd attempted to book a farmstay for the weekend but the host I got in touch with were in the midst of remodling all their farmstay rooms. But they offered us the use of their beach cottage and included a tour of their farm and dinner at their house on Saturday night. Sweet!

Saturday morning we checked out Mclean Falls and wandered around Papatowai beach and a little nature walk before heading over to the farm for our tour.

The tour was much more than we were both expecting. September through November is Lambing season in New Zealand and there were lots of brand new lambs and calves running around the farm. So cute. I think we were too busy marveling at the new lambs, so for some reason we didn't get any pictures of them. The farm was also one of the sites used for the filming of the Chronicles of Narnia. Here's some of the pictures from our trip...

The rocks at the end of the beach at Papatowai

Mclean Falls

Our hosts, Helen-May and Alan Greenwood

One of the new calves

I was terrified to be standing here (and I was at least 12 feet away from the edge)

One of the castles from the movie Chronicles of Narnia was right where we were standing.

This beach was also featured in the Narnia movie (Aslan walked across it at the end)

We watched the movie when we got home.

We went on a couple hikes Sunday morning before heading home to Dunedin. Here's a few pics from our hikes...

Dave on Cannibal Bay

Sea lions at Cannibal Bay

Terns at Suvat Bay

Drea on the beach at the end of Old Coach Road

Kereru near Papatowai

Till next time,
Dave and Andrea

Ohau I love to ski!

Hey all,

I finally got up to try out skiing in New Zealand and I definitely cannot say I was disappointed. I went up with a group of about 10 of my coworkers for a weekend of skiing at Ohau Ski resort. Just a few miles just south of Mount Cook. It turned out to be an absolutely beautiful weekend. The ski field was small but there probably weren't more than 200 skiers total and the views were tremendous. A lot of the most interesting parts of the field required a bit of hiking but it was all worth it. You could ski a powder line on Saturday and that line was still there at Sunday afternoon. I don't think I've ever seen that in California.

I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking...

The gang (Rhys, Jackie and their two kids, Dave S, Jenny, Melvin, myself and Mike)

From the top of the hike on Saturday




Lake Ohau
The top of the hike on Sunday

Cheers,
Dave

row row row your stupid boat

Hi everyone,

We're back in Dunedin after a nice little trip back to the states. I'm happy to report that my dad is doing very well, back walking every day to the coffee shop and annoying my mother with his request for driving privileges. (In a rare twist, I got to give my dad driving lessons back in the same place he taught me to drive 20 years ago. Hands at 10 and 2 please!)

After getting back we had a full weekend to catch up on our sleep and enjoy some beautiful weather. It's exciting coming back to town and finding that all of a sudden it's light out until 6:30. Before we left it was barely light at 5:30.

We went back to our regular Monday night trivia game as well, with our friends Frankie, Gabby and Danny (Tom's still on vacation and we're looking forward to having him back). We've been fighting for third place with another team from Andrea's work but this week, for the first time, we won it!! On a tiebreaker question against the group that wins every week. The winning question was "how many current New Zealand residents were born in England?" Feel free to guess, closest guess gets a postcard.

Also new for this week, I took up a new sport. I got up at the ungodly hour of 5:30am, went down to the harbor and took part in my company sponsored crew team. You know what I learned? I really suck at crew. I should have known it was going to be rough when putting the boat into the water I ended up getting soaked well past my knees. Then while rowing I kept getting my oar stuck underwater, which they call "crabbing" here. One particular "crabbed" oar jumped out of my hands and fattened my lip. Stupid oar. I also managed to cut my foot, get a weird bruise on my stomach and break my seat. To everyone's credit they tried to stay encouraging.

Sorry no pictures, we'll take some soon.
Love,
Dave and Andrea

Fleur's

Hey Everyone,

The other weekend we had another opportunity to convene with the Slow Food Otago Group. They had scheduled a luncheon at Fleur's place in Moeraki. Fleur's is one of the more famous restaurants in New Zealand located in a small coastal village about an hour north of Dunedin. Fleur is a strong believer in cooking for the seasons, fresh local food and a lot of the ideas that Slow Food encourages. She cooked us up an unbelievable feast with several courses. Here are some of the highlights (apologies for the photo quality, these are all from my phone):

Seaweed bread with watercress pesto and a creamy cheese she made by boiling sea water and milk together. (who knew!)

Roasted vegetable risotto

Roast Mutton Bird (Mutton bird is a Maori delicacy. The birds are harvested on small islands off the coast of Stewart Islands)

A fish plate with several different kinds of smoked fish and shellfish steamed in a bag made from kelp

The view from the restaurant.

What are two things that Andrea won't won't eat?

These guys right here.

Till next time.
Dave and Andrea

DOC tree planting weekend

Hi all,

So a few weeks ago Drea heard about a Department of Conservation trip that went down to the Catlins (an area about an hour south of us known for lush native bush, New Zealand wildlife and wet wet weather) . The purpose of the trip was to plant trees in a Yellow Eyed Penguin reserve that had been burned in a fire and cleared of vegetation about 15 years ago. The fire killed many of the endangered yellow eyed penguins that had been nesting in that area at the time. Since then, the land has been acquired by the DOC and a process of revegetation has led to the return of penguins to the area. This trip would continue the process of vegetation with the introduction of some of the larger native tree species such as Totara and Rimu (and several others I can't remember the names of) Anyway, Drea tried to sign us up only to find that there were no spots left. Then on Wednesday we received an email stating that 2 spaces had opened on the trip so we tried to sign up. Alas we were too late and the spots disappear only for one spot to reopen on Thursday. So Drea, figuring that a weekend without me meant a weekend of good studying signed me up. Sounded like fun so I went along with it.

We all met shortly after work on Friday night and drove down to the Tuatuku Lodge.
The lodge is owned by the New Zealand Department of Forest and Bird (who were co-sponsoring this volunteer trip to the reserve). The lodge had three cabins on the property. One that held 10, one that held 4 and a cute little A-frame for 3. I ended up in the A-frame but myself which was actually pretty nice. Especially after I woke up in the middle of the night, tripped over my bag and landed hard on one of the other beds.

The next morning the DOC staff cooked up a nice breakfast and we went off to Te Rere. We met up with another group that came up from Invercargill and proceeded to the reserve. Once there we divided into groups and planted the trees in between some Flax plantings that had been placed in previous trips.

Here one of the trip leaders is showing us the correct tree planting techniques.

It was a bit drizzly out but it could've been worse.

A successful tree planting

The site overlooked some beautiful and rugged coastline.

The waves would crash against the rocks and sometime fly up over the cliff which was about 60 feet high.

Here's looking back into the reserve from the top of the cliff.

Unfortunately my battery died at this point. We went back to the lodge after planting a couple hundred trees and were fixed a delicious meal with wine and homemade bread all courtesy of the Department of Conservation. Then spent the rest of the evening getting to know the other members of the group. Most of them were University students specializing in ecology or biology, so it was interesting to hear from them about their studies and how it related to things we had been seeing out at the reserve.

The next morning we went out to a nearby beach and went to town on a couple of gorse bushes. The gorse is an invasive weed covered in spines and little yellow flowers that Drea and I think smell like coconut oil. They can be pretty but in New Zealand they're a horrible nuisance so we set about with axes and saws and cleared the headlands of the beach in a few hours. We followed up the work with a short nature walk and then headed back home.

Drea and I are now looking at other DOC volunteer opportunities that we'll hopefully both be able to take part in.

Dave

Costumes, Kilts and Beer

Hi all,

We have literally had a ball the other weekend. The extended revelry started Thursday at 3pm with the Speights Brewery Tour with Cadbury Chocolate pairing and naming contest. Generally the Speights brewery tour is a delightful tour in and of itself. But since it was Cadbury week here in Dunedin they decided to do a little combo event. The tour was your basic brewery tour, in essence, an extended sales pitch with the basics of the beer making thrown in. (For those beer purists out there, I'm pretty sure Speights doesn't follow the German purity laws - our first stop was where they add in all the sugar) But at the tasting part of the tour they combined the tasting of their range of 7 beers with about a dozen of Cadbury's finest chocolates. Yum and Double yum!

Here's our tour guide Jane

Did you know that a Hogshead, Half-Hogshead, Barrel, Kilderkin, Butt and Pin are all types of beer kegs

So they made the mistake of allowing us to pour our own beers. Here's Drea's turn behind the tap.

Here's my turn.

Here's the result of too many rounds of pour your own.

As part of the tasting they were having a naming contest for the chocolate beer pairings. They have beers like Old Dark and it was paired with some Cadbury Old Gold and the suggested name was "Old Favorites" (I know, no wonder they were having a naming contest). The prize for best name for each pair got a $50 gift certificate at the gift shop. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Friday night after work was the night of the Ball. After visiting the Larnach Castle on the Peninsula back during my parents visit we found out about the Larnach Castle winter ball. They decorated the ballroom in Victorian splendor and invited about 200 folks to attend in their finest Victorian costumes. The festivities included the dancing to called dances with Scottish Folk band accompaniment, dinner and the traditional Address of the Haggis (tastes like meaty stuffing, and not altogether horrible) where the host recited this poem by Robert Burns (didn't make sense when he recited it aloud either).

The Address of the Haggis

We'd reserved our costumes about 2 months ago and hadn't really given a lot of thought to "Victorian Costume". We were told on the invitation to go to a costume shop in town that would take care of us. Long story short, any one with the slightest bit of fashion history knowledge will see from the pictures that my costume is decidedly not "Victorian". (In fact, when we returned it, we realized the costume was titled "medieval prince" - only about 400 hundred years off. But men's style's are timeless, Right???)

Wrong.

Please note all the appropriately dressed attendees.

We also ran into our tour guide from Thursday's brewery tour! Small town eh?

At least we found someone else that went to the same costume shop.

But poor fashion sense aside we had a great time. The food was excellent, albeit a bit on the late side, and the called dances were great fun. Here's a video I took of one of the dances. I think this one was before the caller had had too many beers and started messing up the calls.

I think it's hard to look good doing this dance regardless how good you are at it.

When we got home we had a bit of fun with our costumes. Here's a couple videos of us being silly...

Drea thought I looked like a russian dancer (and it's true, I'm getting old)

I thought she looked like a vampire (scary!!!)

Then on Saturday night, after all this revelry, Dave's company had their own costumed night out on the town. We had our winter drinks and dinner at the Scottish restaurant next to the train station. The theme of the evening was Braveheart. Drea was a little partied out from the preivous two days (plus they would've charged us $50 for her to attend. I know, booo!) so she stayed home and studied. I borrowed a kilt from a friend of mine but didn't decide to spring for the face paint or the giant sword so my costume was pretty bland compared to the night before. Here are a couple pics from the evening...

The guy to my right came dressed in drag in a costume that made no sense. Only for the truly brave of heart, I guess.

More to come on Dave's weekend away planting trees coming soon.

Love to all,

Dave and Andrea