Picture-licious

Just a few photos of the last couple of days. We went on a Speights brewery tour courtesy of our Cameron family (they gave us a gift certif. for christmas). It was nice to get out and do something fun after a week of paperwork, schoolwork, and other such things. 

We spent Sunday afternoon with the young adults group from the Dunedin city Baptist Church that we've attended for the past two Sundays. It was nice to hang out with some people our own age, and to see the beach! I've missed it. I couldn't stop thinking about my puppy dog and how much he'd love it!

On our walk this afternoon we ventured into McNZ's, in search of the kiwi burger we've heard stories of..We didn't find it, but we did find more fat and carbohydrates packed into one meal than we usually eat in a whole day... I think it's been almost 5 years since I've eaten a McDonalds meal, and now thankfully I've had my fill for another 5. Good times:)

This is Andersons Bay, a 15 minute walk down the hill from where we live. It's another 30 minutes to walk from here to get downtown, or a 10 minute bus ride.

And because so many of you have asked so many times, here's a few of our new little home. It's getting cozier daily with the addition of unpacked pictures being hung and personal belongings being scattered about.

And finally this is me, So Happy that you're here reading my blog!

xo!

It's alll new...

Well…

…

…I’m puffed. (aka: exhausted)

First week is almost over. I’m not sure if I’m more emotionally, mentally, or physically tired, but what I do know is that I’m terrified of feeling this way before the “real” work has even begun.

The constant processing of new sights, sounds, information, and accents has turned my brain into a mushy pound of incoherent thoughts by the time I return home every evening. This isn’t an inherently a negative experience, though. In fact I’ve been almost enjoying the daily bombardment of school-related information to process, and new peoples names to remember, and kiwi words to decipher. It’s such an intense change from my little cocoon of Ucluelet. I’m doing my best to embrace it, and have been doing a fairly good job, if you ask me. (If you ask Steven you may get a different answer. Unfortunately the old adage that those we love the most get the worst of us has proven true over the last few days. With my “happy kait” face plastered on all day at school I have to admit I’m tired of smiling by the time I get home). Speaking of Steven, though, he has been nothing but supportive and helpful as I’ve surfed through this first week. He’s even done the dishes every day, and made the bed in the mornings. What a fantastic stay-at-home husband he is!! I am blessed, and do work to not take it for granted. I love being able to save up funny stories of kiwi slang and other new things I’m experiencing to share with him…I almost laughed out loud the first time I heard someone call flipflop sandals “jandles”, until I realized that if I did the joke would soon become about the Canadian who doesn’t understand kiwi, so I kept my mouth shut and laughed later with my oh-so-lovely Canadian husband.

As far as the course itself goes, it’s so varied and involves so much, and we’ve had such a brief overview of it all, that its really hard to comment. There are 60-odd of us ladies from all over New Zealand (and beyond in my case), ranging in ages from 16 to mid-50’s, all here in Dunedin for this first orientation week. After tomorrow all but 20 are leaving the city and going back to their various hometowns to complete the rest of the course. It’s set up in a way that most of it is done online through live tutorials with instructors and other students. We will also meet once a week with our Student Practice Facilitators in a small group to go over the more hands-on aspects of learning and to debrief about our casework. It’s really a nice design for those who want to study full-time without committing to physically going to class every day.

 Tomorrow we will get detailed course descriptions and a better overview of the specifics, so I’ll know more about what day-to-day life will look like after that.

The most interesting part of this week was an overnight camp we all went on for Tuesday and Wednesday. We were bused 20 minutes outside of town and stayed in a cute little scouts camp with cabins and huge beautiful lawns and forest all around. It was a great way to get to know the other girls and staff of the program, and we spent the days doing various team-building and communication-enhancing activities and games…All interspersed with plenty of “tea times” (a kiwis excuse for eating cake any time of day, I’ve decided) and visiting. It really felt like being at summer camp again! We went on a “bush tromp” on Wednesday afternoon, 5km up a hill and through the forest surrounding the camp. It was beautiful, and I was surprised at how similar much of the foliage was to what we have in Canada. Besides the various types of brightly colored mushrooms, some weirdly huge fern-type plants, and the lack of giant trees, things pretty much looked the same. I appreciated the familiarity, and the fact that you can tromp through any bush or wilderness here without the fear of anything poisonous or dangerous. No undomesticated land-mammals around here, and you have to go as far as Aussie to find any poisonous spiders or snakes.

Stevens making me supper now, and I’m sitting here sipping my cup of wine (we have yet to invest in proper wine glasses) and contemplating what I’ve gotten myself into. Oh, and now that I’m thinking about it, I do recommend a trip to NZ if for no other reason than to drink the wine. It’s FANTASTIC, and cheap. Double plus;)

Love you all, and miss your smiling faces. Kiss my dog for me when you see him! xo

Purple Potatoes!! Delicious.

Scout camp!

Slathering the sunscreen

Games..

New friends! Sarah, Neice, and Jackie

Giant monster ferns..

No jandals for me..

Home again..?

We made it.
The flight was uneventful, actually. I slept for almost the whole thing, and didn't even have time to watch a movie or read more than a chapter of my book...Which sounds boring and all, but was actually quite an accomplishment for me. I'm not usually a very stress-free flyer ;)
And Dunedin...? Beautiful.

 We're an hours walk from town into Andersons Bay (I know because we walked it twice in the last two days before figuring out the bus schedule...), a lovely suburb of rows of brick houses with leaded and stained glass windows, white picket fences and cute little garages..Each house unique and vibrantly painted, set against huge rolling green hills and the beautiful blue pacific ocean.

 The centre of town itself is small and full of character. Feels like a combination of Nanaimo and Victoria, actually. Besides Dunedin having Noodle Hut instead of Noodle Box, chemist's instead of pharmacies, and everyone driving on the wrong side of the road, I could pretty much convince myself I was still in Canada. The similarities far outnumber the differences, so far.

We spent the entirety of Thursday afternoon and all day yesterday sorting out all kinds of boring things like insurance, bank accounts, student IDs, visas, and cell phone plans. Not very exciting stuff, but we got the see the city at least and learn our way around.
 Today was spent running around the farmers market in the pouring rain (yes, its summer here, and yes, so far it rains just as much as Ucluelet), and wandering around our neighbourhood appreciating how small the world seems with free across-the-world-calling and the same pacific ocean we left at home right outside our door.

ALSO!!! :
 TWO MORE SLEEPS. TWO MORE SLEEPS. TWO MORRRE SLEEEEPS!
 Haha. Is it ok to be this immature when I'm going to be in a bachelor of midwifery program starting in just TWO MORE SLEEPS? Maybe I just need another glass of wine...Don't worry. I'm only a LITTLE excited ;)

 Hopefully the pictures work, I'll be adding more soon.
xo
Kait

PS...Our landlords who live upstairs have a 9 yr old nephew who is over visiting often...His name is Caleb and he has ADHD and is completely off the wall bonkers, and an extremely cute little kid. He's decided that he adores Steven, who refers to him as "little dude", which, due to his lovely Canadian accent, makes Caleb fall over into a fit of giggles. I figured this was cute enough to mention..Caleb thinks Steven sounds like spiderman and that he thinks Canada is the coolest place to live "EVER!".

The chaos

 I would not be who I am or where I am if it were not for my mother. She's saved my life yet again by spending hours of the past two days helping me to organize my life into the small compact size of boxes and suitcases. I appreciate her, my dad, and my siblings so much for everything they have given to see me succeed.

  Where would any of us be without our moms, really? God is a smart God for creating maternal instinct.

 I'm leaving my sweet giant puppy tomorrow. I'm actually leaving a lot of things tomorrow, but my pup is the one heaviest on my mind as I head towards bed this evening. How is it possible to love a dog so much?? I didn't think it was. Although perhaps it's a possibility that I'm taking all of my emotional baggage about leaving everything I've ever known as home and placing it on my dog because it's too heavy to carry around anymore. Possibly.
 Or maybe I just really, really love my dog.

 I have about a billion things that I have to do before noon tomorrow... Including but not limited to repacking 2 of my perfectly packed suitcases because they are perfectly 10 lbs over my weight limit.  O_o .....oi.

 I don't know when I'll post again. It's kind of hard when there's a thousand different things that you're thinking about every day and a thousand different things that could make for interesting blog posts... Such as my sweet doula group and the meeting I had with them last week, and how much I love and am encouraged by them all the time! Or like the lovely farewell party my family and friends held for us on Sunday evening at Black Rock Resort.. Such a sweet time of tasty food and fellowship. Or theres birth and midwifery. I haven't even started reading my textbooks yet but I'm pretty sure I could write at least a blog post a day about my personal feelings on the subject.
I haven't really caught onto how best to blog yet.

 Anyway, the next post will probably be once we're in NZ. Or maybe on the plane. Or maybe before that in California. We're stopping for 4 days to go to Disneyland with my family...I'm SO glad that this worked out and that we'll have so much concentrated time together before I (literally) take off!

 God is good...I'm feeling better right now about this whole departure thing than I have yet. Today was a pretty rough day of sorting and sulking and staring at the walls and out the windows in remembrance of days past and anxiety about the unknown..But I am feeling better. Blame the red wine or the good company, perhaps (we spent the evening with Amy, Scott and Logan), but I'm blaming God for giving me just enough joy, excitement, and strength to make it though.

(remind me of that tomorrow as I leave my dog behind, ok?)

xo!

Every woman deserves a midwife

.. I was just leaving a comment on another blog that I follow (At Your Cervix) and I thought it was post worthy.

Wouldn't it be amazing if a Bachelor of Midwifery degree was offered at most Canadian universities, much like direct-entry Bachelor of Nursing degrees are offered now? I can't/don't understand what would be so much more difficult about offering such a degree. Imagine if our very own North Island College was to offer such a program. The revenue alone would make it worth it! Women would flock from all over the continent (and perhaps beyond) to access a direct-entry midwifery program offered in such a rural and beautiful location (I'm thinking the Comox/Courtenay campus)..Never mind the benefits it would have on maternity care here on the island. I know I'm obviously not taking into consideration the costs or struggles of starting such a program (I'm not even aware of all of them!), but I do know that I am pretty good at looking at the "big" picture, pretty good at dreaming, and pretty good at teaching. What better a place than the Comox Valley to offer such a program, what with the midwifery and natural birthing community already so large and so strong, and such a vital element of the lifestyle those from the valley know and love?

Who knows what it would take. But if no one ever takes the time to consider the possibilities in life, than we may as well stop living.

 Every woman deserves a midwife. How incredible would it be to be a part of something bigger than yourself, something bigger than helping one woman with one delivery (although that in itself is an amazing undertaking, is so worth it, and is basically everything I am aspiring to at this point). Although I clearly have no idea where the road ahead will take me, I can imagine I would love to teach midwifery one day. Is that too much to be thinking about when I haven't even been taught it yet myself?