Dunedin street art, lockdown (again) & tsunamis

 So it's been very busy at work since I last wrote. I'm now teaching on 5 courses although they tend to alternate weeks. However, they aren't all in Auckland! I therefore had the delights of teaching in the Bay of Plenty to a really nice group of nurses from a wide variety of backgrounds. One of the confusing things here is that hospitals and cities are often called by their region. Hence, Bay of Plenty is actually Tauranga (pronounce toe-rang-ahh according to the poster in the airport there, rather than towel-wranger!) After a couple of nights there, I was back in Auckland to teach the same course to a different group of nurses with a different colleague. It does get a bit confusing!

However, that was not all the travel on a plane that week as I set off on Friday afternoon with Jonathan for a weekend in Dunedin. One of the joys of working freelance for Philips is that I get to plan my travel so knowing I had a long day of teaching on the Monday, getting there on the Friday seemed like a good plan (obviously we pay for the extra nights & Jonathan's travel.) It turned out to be a very good plan, as Auckland went back into level 3 lockdown on Sunday morning at 6am, so I wouldn't have been able to travel that day otherwise. As you may remember, we managed to miss the previous 3 day lockdown in Auckland, but we did end up flying back into it on Monday night. It's not been too bad and as of today (Sunday) we are now down to level 2 again. This means masks for teaching and extra caution whilst working from home wherever possible.

Dunedin was a real joy to explore the street art is incredible so I'm only adding a few of the photos I took to entice you. It is a very "scottish" city with architecture similar to that seen in in Glasgow or Edinburgh. They have their own tartan and a statue of Robert Burns in the centre, just to prove it.

Statue of Robert Burns - popular with the seagulls.

The street art is so good that there is a trail you can follow, but we found loads more than was listed.

 

 

 The Chinese gardens were a lovely place to spend a tranquil hour or two. Like many settlers, the Chinese were enticed by the gold mines originally and Otago (the region) was a hot spot for this. As a lasting legacy for the community there are now these gardens which are rather lovely.

There are lots of trendy cafes and art galleries throughout Dunedin, but the facility that we found most humourous was this.

This is for washing your dog (it's next to the car wash.)

And so, we are now back in Auckland having had to postpone our visit this weekend to Hawkes bay. However, the concert there (Crowded House) is now rebooked for the end of the month so hopefully we'll be able to make it there then. 

 

After a very full day teaching about non-invasive ventilation and COVID-19 in Dunedin, I returned to teaching in Auckland for the university. This was my first week of teaching on Zoom thanks to the lockdown and I had to climb the steep learning curve that everyone else did last year! My first day of leading the teaching didn't got quite as smoothly as I'd hoped with my colleague's internet crashing, and far more dramatically, a tsunami warning being issued and then upgraded! In case you wonder what happens, we get this on our phones:

Fortunately, the 8.0 earthquake 130 km off the coast didn't cause a major tsunami although there were some big waves off Northland. We never had to evacuate to higher ground (& we live on a hill!) and were stood down by the early afternoon.  We managed to get through most of the teaching for the day though with only one session being postponed. I'm glad I've been teaching for a while but to cope with the unexpected, but I definitely had glass of wine that night!

 

In the meantime, we are chilling out at home, catching up on jobs and even a bit of gardening and sewing. The Vegepod is amazing. This is what happens after having your seeds go in after FIVE weeks!

Rocket, spinach, choi sum, tomatoes and more!

I've just made my first item of clothing in about 8 months - a skirt for work, plus mended several items of clothing, so it feels good to be able to play with my machines again. However, it's sunny but cooler now so I'll need to do some more gardening whilst I can! In the meantime, here's the view from our balcony.

Rangitoto is the volcano in the distance, the harbour is in the foreground & the port is to the left.