Guest Post for Expat Edna's Blog

Edna contacted me to write a guest post for the "I Love My Neighborhood" series on her Expat Edna blog.  I was nervous writing for someone else's blog, but I'm thrilled that I get to share my love of New Zealand with a wider audience.

Here's the link.  Enjoy!

The $16.50 Pizza

Today, I was invited to a tea for two ladies leaving MInT.  We were all asked to bring a plate and normally I would look forward to finding a new recipe to test, but without a proper kitchen and ingredients (sorry, New Zealand, things just aren't the same) I didn't want to come up with another failure (refer to the breakfast pizza incident for more information).  So, I decided to stop at Poppa's Pizza to pick up something delicious (it always smells SO good when I walk by!).

I went for the vegetarian pizza because it had corn and pineapple on it.  When have you ever seen that combo (plus peppers, mushrooms, olives, onion and tomato) on a pizza?!  I was taken aback by the cost, however.  $16.50 for something no bigger than 8" in diameter.  For real. (You can see the A4 size paper on the wall in the lower right corner for reference: I bought the regular size.)  So, family and friends, I'm not kidding when I tell you that New Zealand is expensive!  The pizza did not disappoint and that's all that matters.  If you're in Dunedin, go to Poppa's Pizza now!

Down by the (Curio) Bay

Yesterday, I went on a little day trip to Curio Bay with Geoff, Bryce, Emmet and Kate.  It was great to get out of Dunedin for a little while to explore New Zealand some more.  We rented a car and I was the designated driver.  Things went pretty well with Kate as my co-pilot.

We stopped for a second to stretch our legs, take a break from playing 20 Questions, and take a picture of this rainbow:

Our first stop was the Jurassic fossil forest.  At low tide we saw the stone remains of tree stumps and logs.

After all that fresh air, we needed a tea/coffee break.  The place we stopped at just happened to be near Niagraa Falls!

Turns out, it was nothing more than a bump in the water.  It was given the name by a surveyor with a sense of humor.

Next up, a pit stop at Nugget Point.  I really enjoyed the short walk to the lighthouse.

Today, we took another trip, but headed to the peninsula this time.  Our final destination was the Royal Albatross Centre.  It wasn't windy enough for them to be out and about.

I had one minor goof-up with my driving today.  We made a wrong turn, so I pulled over to turn around and my brain didn't process the change in direction very well - I ended up on the right hand side of the road and a car was headed straight for us.  No big deal to move over, though!  The second driving "uh oh" moment occurred when we took the wrong road to the albatross colony.  The roads here are half the size of roads in the U.S. and on one side of the road was a cliff and on the other was the side of a hill - not much room to maneuver! We had to use team work to get the car turned around - my 3-point turn turned into a 12-point turn because I was SO nervous that I'd drive us over the cliff, even with Geoff out of the car directing me!  Despite a few hiccups today, I'm feeling much more confident with my driving. Yay!

Do I see a New Zealand driver license in my future? Stay tuned!

Chocolate Fish

There's a tradition at the University of Otago: hand in your thesis and you get a chocolate fish.  Today, I went to a workshop on writing my thesis and we all got a fish as a teaser. M'mmmm.  Guess I better get working on that thesis!

Easier said than done.

There's a little quote in The Seven Secrets of Highly Successful Research Students about a thesis being "10% intelligence and 90% persistence."  Unfortunately, lately I've been stuck.  I keep waiting for the magic moment when I feel like I can sit down and write something that will be groundbreaking.  Alas, I think I'm finally coming around.  I'm not trying to cure cancer here (thank you Hugh Kearns & Maria Gardiner, authors of "The Seven Secrets," for helping me see the light).  Therefore, I shouldn't feel bad that I'm actually more effective at writing when I'm plopped down in front of the TV with the Real Housewives of New York City on and Facebook open.  I just don't work well under "ideal" conditions: either in the office in front of a shiny new Mac with zero sound except the humming of the lights (actually, the other day I plugged in my headphones and listened to Guns N' Roses while I edited my manuscript - it was heavenly) or in a coffee shop tapping away on my laptop.

So, that's that.  I should have known that my vision of sitting in a coffee shop as a half-fashionista/half-postgrad student was dashed the day I was still at home packing and couldn't fit nothing but sensible shoes in my suitcase.  From now on, I'll be spending most days sitting in front of trashy TV for hours writing about the importance of researching weight gain prevention interventions.  I can't wait!

Ants in His Pants

For some reason, my mind still has moments where it forgets that I live in the southern hemisphere.  Today, Kate (flatmate) and I walked to campus together.  On our way, she scraped some snow off the top of a car and threw it at me.  To my dismay, there wasn't enough snow on the car for me to make a snowball to throw back in my defense (the snow covered cars parked on Cumberland St. had driven in from the outskirts of the city-we didn't get any accumulation in the northern part of Dunedin).  So, yeah, snow... in June!!!  I can't believe it!  It feels like January.

Yesterday, I measured two participants for the MInT study.  The first one was a severe burn survivor.  Poor kid was head to toe in scars; I couldn't help thinking they are so lucky to be alive.  As I wrapped the measuring tape around the participant's stomach I noticed what was once a belly button was now a small dot the size of a pin hole.  I worried for the participant because I didn't want them to feel self-conscious. I made sure to keep reading the participant's face just to be sure they were comfortable with me taking the measurements; it all went smoothly.

The second participant was a six year old boy who would not stand still!  Honestly, if his feet weren't moving, it was his knees.  If his knees weren't moving, it was his head. And, on top of that, he was one impatient little thing!  This was a follow-up visit and he knew where to stand to get all the measurements taken, but when I tried to explain that he couldn't just jump onto the BIA machine because it gets confused (I have to plug in numbers from his measurements so it can do it's calibration thing) he started huffing!  To his defense, he had already been to the hospital for a DXA scan and he told me he was ready to go home.  I couldn't get mad though, it was just too funny to see such a wiggly kid.

So, I can definitely say it has been interesting working at MInT.  Each family is so unique; and it's been an honor and an adventure to meet so many great people through this study.

Brrrr! Who turned the temp down?!

It's officially cold in Dunedin.  And you know what? It's only going to get colder!

Here are a few recent pictures from a walk around campus:

Next weekend, I'm hoping we'll get to go on a trip to get out of Dunedin for a day.  Unfortunately, I lost my wallet this weekend and it contained my license - I'm supposed to be the driver.  Fingers crossed it shows up!

"I'm a nurse!"

It's a long weekend, yay!  Monday marks the Queen's birthday, so it's a public holiday here.  But, for postgrads, this just means another day of work, work, work.

Speaking of work, we sent out replacement questionnaires to women in our sample who haven't responded yet.  Here's a photo of the finished result (I think there are 700 surveys in all).  

In about another week we'll send a final reminder postcard and that will be the end of that.  Completed surveys are still rolling in and we're still getting surveys with fun comments like this:

In case you can't read it, it says:

Thank you for the tea and I'm always happy to fill out your questionnaires and its great to get the results and hopefully my answers will help you all. (smiley face) Have a great day. 

-Wendy

Here's another response that I got a kick out of:

 In case you can't tell, the question asks how you would describe your usual rate of eating and she circled "Relatively fast" and added, "I'm a nurse!"

Hopefully, you all are enjoying the updates on the survey as much as I enjoy sharing.  Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions about what we're doing.