Gilberts Invade Peaceful New Zeland

Jaden prepares for an extreme ride down the mountain on a luge sled above Queenstown.

Christian just can't let go of the controls....no brakes!

Where can we get more money to ride the luge again? (and again and again...)
This is the boys idea of a REAL schoolbus ride. Everyone got to drive, even Christian who was crazy and Jaden who drove us straight through the river and over cars.

Shynn, we're not convinced by that smile, the water looks COLD!

Christian paddled the whole way and even jumped off a rock and swam across the river back to the boat.

Ambulance Chaser

Well, it's a weekend on call and the calls just don't stop. Part of the job is responding to all the ambulance calls in my area. Yesterday I showed up at a run down house with 20+ cats and a dead man inside. Ok, it was a little spooky but it looked like he died of natural causes. Today it was a 17 year old boy with seizures....then just a few boring office calls: hemorrhoids, a sore ear, infected hip wound...who knows what next, it's not even 10am yet!

Actually, it's not always this bad. I'm just hoping to get them all set and then be able to go out to one of the local farms and try my hand at some farming skills...milking, etc. We've already been able to go out lambing (when the sheep are having babies) and catch a few newborns. Kimball was more interested in the ancient sheepdog they had (he was pretty cool, the dog rode on the back of the 4-wheeler since he was crippled and stared down the sheep from there).

Don't have pictures yet, but Kimball cut my hair. No, it's not a disaster, i like it, it's the shortest its been in 25 years! Still hoping to look old enough to be a doctor...

Bad season to be a Mouse...

Mavora Lakes...where they shot heaps of LOTR scenes...
Once every five years or so, you can fly-fish with mouse patterns up here...the trees release heaps of seed every 5 yrs, that the mice get full up on, and then they cross the rivers & lakes to get more, causing the fish to feed on the poor lil' mice. The NZ record is 21 confirmed mice skeletons found inside one FAT trout!
Secret fishin' spot...

Death to Didymo!

This is what they mean by gin-clear water!!! Unfortunately, they say careless US flyfishers appear to be spreading a US-based algae in the NZ rivers...hmmmmm.....

More Fishing!

Waiau River...hatch was going' off late at night, and Amy caught her first NZ fish dry-flying!
Upper Matuara River...
Mokoreta stream...

defunction

i know, i know, promised pictures...so far i can only get letters, numbers and symbols in gibberish - help!

well, the week continues smoothly, with a supremely quite call wednesday night and i've just agreed to be the backup call for Twizel this weekend. (if you look at the map that's close to mt. cook...anyway it's phone call only, no long drives for me). the idea is to have a PRIME trained nurse (kinda like ACLS) on call then a doctor for back up by phone. if nurses here can start doing the same, i may just get a few more weekends away. don't exactly know how that affects my liability but alot of scary things seem to work here in the name of rural medicine.



more later...the next patient has arrived.

North Island

we flew off to Rotorua tuesday and had 5 glorious days exploring north island (where its WARM). from swimming with hundreds of dolphins in the ocean at Whakatane (pronounced fuk-a-tawn-ee) to surfing at Raglan! Don't forget blackwater rafting by the light of gloworms... we're sold on life in North Island. oh yeah, we stayed in a hundred year old hotel on the hill that was totally victorian (though you do have to climb out your window to get to the porch). but getting back to our south island home was the best. we love it all!

been procrastinating on studying the sabbath school lesson, which is bad, because we're teaching this sabbath. also doing song service, and we hope not the children's story (but we're prepared just in case). we never thought we'd be so involved in church since we're always up and going somewhere on the weekends (and there's so many places to go). but they really appreciate it and we get alot out of it so we keep agreeing to do more and more.

the new zealand language is also growing on us. we like it heaps. we're always saying cheers but can't quite get used to "ta" which seems to mean, bye and thanks in the same word. in fact, i'm so used to it, i can't think of any more words right now. culture is different too. they're very egalitarian, no one looks up to you just because of your position, you actually have to earn their trust by talking and socializing before you get to what they really came in for. you can never tell what they actually want though, because no one wants to offend, so they're just pleasant no matter what.

well, that's a pretty substantial amount of writing for me so don't get you're hopes up...though i will try to do better.