NEWSFLASH

A week on from my last post and the phone interview never eventuated... apparently they are waiting for more funding to come through so the job didnt come from there.  The good news however, I got a call yesterday telling me I had got a position down in Weymouth if I wanted it.  The role is elderly rehab and a mix of inpatient and community.  Weymouth is about 3 hours from London by train so I am organising to move down to Weymouth for the 3 months that the contract is for.  I need to have a car so I am going to be renting one, I even went for a driving lesson the other day with an instructor to get some more experience in  manual as I have really only driven autos before and it is significantly cheeper to hire a manual, plus the company car is probably a manual and I will have to drive that if my patient is a wheelchair user.  I was a bit spoilt at Abano that we had both an auto car and a auto wheelchair accessible van so it hasnt been an issue untill now.  Dad keeps reminding me that if I can drive across America on my own I should be able to drive a manual... I can drive, I just need to work on not stalling it when taking off!  Ill update you all.
Something exciting that has happened is that for me to be paid for the work that I am doing I have set up a limited company.  I am the director of my own company :)  This morning I had meetings with my business consultant and the bank to set up business accounts so its almost all good to go... talk about putting on my big girl panties!

So thats the last week, its been a productive one and one with a great result.  Im in London at the moment for my meetings but about to head back to Hemel Hempstead.  Nikki is having her Bday party on friday then Saturday I am back to London to move Rach and Stevo's stuff from one room in the flat to the other (Steve's passport and visa FINALLY came back so they are in portugal for the weekend, and I get to do the move), then sunday Ill head down to Weymouth for my start date of Tuesday.

Fingers crossed the move goes well and that my first days are good ones!

The job hunt

It's been a couple of weeks now since Mum and Dad left and my job hunt begun.  So not too much has been happening.  I have moved from sleeping on Rachel's couch to staying in Hemel Hempstead with a good friend Nikki, i've upgraded to a spare room with a bed :)

I went back to London for the weekend and had a really fun weekend with Rachel and Steve.   Rachel and I did a speed tour of a lot if the sites in London... good times!

Im currently signed up with one recruitment agency and in the process of signing up with another.  The processes are slightly different and this one requires some different trainings and paperwork and requires me to have a vaccine for TB so I have to register with a GP to get that sorted. The agency that I am already registered with has put me forward for a few positions. Ufortunately the feedback has been that they want 2 years post grad experience (I have 18 months). I have been successful in getting my first phone interview so fingers crossed something comes from that although the experience in itself will be good.

So thats the haps in England.  Everyone keep your fingers crossed that a position comes up!

Time for a catch up - Morocco and beyond

So it's been a busy month or so and I'm in need of a catch up.  

The first part of our adventure was to Morocco.  We found our way to our little riad where we were staying and it was a little sanctuary in the middle of chaos.  We were in the city of Marrakech and it is a busy city, lots of people, cars, scooters, donkeys and horses and what seemed to be an organised chaos.  We learnt pretty quick that if you waited at a pedestrian crossing for the traffic to stop, that you could be waiting a long time. As soon as you step onto the road, the traffic had a magic way of slowing, stopping and generally just avoiding you.

We were definitely easily identifiable as tourists and us girls in particular were regularly targeted by people wanting to sell you something or provide you with some sort of assistance.  I think it was a bit of a culture shock for dad and he regular walked a few paces behind Mum, Rach and I and kept out a watchful eye - he didn't like the looks and attention that we got as western females.

 We stayed for four nights and got to experience lots - We did a bus tour which took us round the city and showed us the sights, lots of camels and palm trees.  We went shopping and did trading in the souks (markets) and came home with a range of leather, wooden gifts and some woven blankets.  We enjoyed the entertainment in the square and saw monkeys and had snakes wrapped around us.  We took a couple of rides in horse and cart which was a much needed rest at times from all the walking we were doing in the heat (into the mid 40s).  We took a trip up to the Atlas mountains to the cascades and made some stops along the way at some more market and places were they made oils and skin products.  The cascades were a series of waterfalls and all four of us made it to the top. Very proud of Mum and Dad at that point, a couple of times Dad thought he would need to turn back, but he made it, not bad for a 60 year old who isn't used to climbing up rocky sides of mountains.
 
After our time in Marrakech we flew to Marseille in France.  The flight didn't start off too well, as we were walking on the tarmac around the wing to board at the rare of place a large amount of fluid started gushing from the wing, we soon became very aware that the place was leaking fuel.  So we were all ushered back inside and had to wait for over 2 hours while the fire services tended to the leaked fuel and the airline could re perform all the checks and the pilot was satisfied that we could all board and take off.  But we made it safely in the end and that was the important bit.

We arrived into rainy weather in Marseille,  in addition to the weather they are doing a fair bit of development around the city in preparation to be the main city of a cultural event next year.  I wasn't overly impressed with Marseille - it didn't seem very French.  We did a tour of the city via a little train and went up to the Notre Dame de le Gard, and had some fun visiting a candy shop :)  The highlight for me of the two days in Marseille would have been the ferry ride over to Frioul island.  The weather cleared for out trip and made way to a beautiful sunset on the Island.

 

We then took a train from Marseille up to Avignon where we stayed some time with Audrey and her family.  Audrey had spent some time in NZ about 2005/2006 and Rachel and her flatted together and Audrey spent Christmas with our family.  I got to meet her partner and their two beautiful babies, Mateo and Zoe.  Their hospitality was amazing, good food, good wine and good company.  We spent a bit of time exploring the city, went to Pont d'Avignon where we all danced to "Sur le pont d'Avignon", one of Mum's goals of the trip. 

From Avignon, Rachel headed back to London for work and Mum and Dad carried on their trip up to Paris on their own and I stayed on in Avignon for an extra couple of days and just spent some time relaxing with Audrey, Julien and the kids.

I then took the train back to London from Avignon - I traveled through Paris so Mum and Dad met up with me and we had dinner together during my stop over. I had a busy couple of days back in London.  I spent a whole day at the Paralympics which was a good experience, got to see lots of action including the Boccia, Wheelchair fencing, table tennis, powerlifting and the seated volleyball which had to be a favourite.  Rach and Steve came out and met up with me after they had finished work and we got to see more.  

The next day I had two courses back to back, a first aid course and a manual handing course.  They were both courses that I needed to have done before I can start work in the UK.  After finishing the courses I made my way out to Surrey to meet up with Rachel after she finished work and we headed off to the airport.

We met Mum and Dad in Amsterdam and took them for a look around the red light district - I think they were shocked more than anything.  We didn't spend long in Amsterdam as the next morning after breakfast we picked up a hire care in Amsterdam and started the drive north up to Drenthe.  Unfortunately Dad had had his wallet stolen while he was on the Metro in Paris and although not much in the way of cash was taken, a credit card (which was quickly blocked - but not before about 100 Euro worth of charges had been made) and his drivers license were taken.  Due to the lack of drivers license, Dad wasn't able to drive and seeing as the car was a manual, I couldn't do any of the driving (cough cough, I know, I know). But Rach did awesome, we had a mini van so that we could take some of our family in the vehicle with us, and Rach hasn't done much driving in the 2 years she has been in London, but she took to driving on the other side of the road quickly, only needed a couple of reminders :)

Being back in Holland was awesome - I was lucky to spend about 12 days or so there in 2008 during my travels but it was definitely special to be back there with Mum, Dad and Rach.  Mum surprised us all with her ability to converse in Dutch.  Mum, although both her parents were dutch and moved to NZ not long before she was born had decided not to speak much Dutch once they made the move to NZ, as a result Mum never really was spoken to in Dutch was was exposed to it where her parents would speak to their dutch friends or on the phone to family.  So it was amazing... Dad had to make videos as even Mum struggled to believe how effective she was.  

We stayed with Mum's cousin Rika and spent a lot of time with Gerdina and Luuk who are my second cousin and her husband.  Having the van meant we could all go together and get to see around Drenthe -  We got to see some of the landmarks, the homes of both my grandparents, spent a day in Giethoorn (known as the Venice of Holland), got to see and visit lots of family and so much more. We had a wonderful evening at Rika's where a large portion of the family got together, it's a special feeling to be related to so many warm and welcoming people.  We got to go all together and see Tante Margien - Tante Margien is my grandmother's sister in law and was someone who even though I couldn't talk to in 2008, I still felt that we had connected.  It was special to be able to meet her again and was very special that Mum got to see her.  In November this year Tante Margien will be 99 - and she displayed when we all got up to leave that she has still got energy in her yet.  She did however say that she hopes to not make it to 100 which was a shock at first but she explained - It is nice to live, but it is not nice to out-live.  Wise words!


Again the hospitality that was given to us was amazing - Rika opening up her house to all four of us, Luuk and Gerdina spending the time with us, spending quality time and showing us around and providing translation were needed was always a bonus, being welcomed by so many people (and animals) - too many to mention all by name, and getting to experience so much.  

Rika's son Marten and his wife treated us to a barbeque and to a tour of the area in Marten's big Mac truck (the second one for me, but no less exciting) and we went for a ride in his Corvette stingray which was finished off with some doughnuts :)  I also really enjoyed getting to meet Suzanne again, Suzanne was only a couple of months old when I first met her in 2008 and it was nice to see her as a four year old, a fun age :)  Rachel and I went with her Mum Marjan to take Suzanne to school one morning and we got a bit of time to play beforehand.

One thing that I am really looking forward to while being over in the UK is being able to visit family in Holland.  We had so many offers of places to go back and stay and I am looking forward to taking up on some of the offers.

It was sad to leave Drenthe but we were farewelled by a group of family and we took off for the drive back to Amsterdam.  Rachel and I flew back out to London that evening and Mum and Dad stayed on for a bit more time in Amsterdam before flying to Edinburgh and then on to Liverpool.  

 

After a few days back in London, Rachel, Steve and I trained from London up to Liverpool.  We spent the night in Liverpool then the next day picked up a rental car and went for a drive.  We drove across and stopped at New Brighton on our way through to  West Kirby and Hoylake, which is where Dad was born and spent some of his younger years.  We saw some houses which he and his family had lived in and the school he had attended along with the church my Grandparents were married in.  Me stopped in to see our Great Auntie Audrey (my Nana's sister)- I had met her when she came over to NZ about 1996 so it was nice to see her again.  She is only a couple of years younger then my Nana and it was awesome to see how active and independent she is.  With both of my sets of Grandparents moving to NZ and away from their family it is a great feeling to get to meet extended family - we have heard stories about many members of our family but they were usually just a name so it is really nice to be so close and to see them. 

We carried on our travels through to Manchester, dropped off the hire car and spent a night before an early morning flight to Athens, Greece.

We spent two nights in Athens, did a hop on hop off tour of the city, saw many sites and got to try the Greek food.  We found a restaurant that served fresh fruit with greek yoghurt for breakfast and that soon became a favourite.  I think my expectations of Athens had set me up for a bit of disappointment - I have visited Rome in Italy and Ephesus in Turkey which are both cities of ruins, and in both cities you have the opportunity to really feel that you are in an old ruined city.  In Rome you have the Colosseum and the Roman forums amongst other things and in Ephesus you are walking the marble streets with old headless statues lining the way. Whereas in Athens, although there were bits of ruins here and there and we went up to the Parthenon on the Acropolis which was awesome, I didn't get the same feeling as I had in other cities.  Athens to me was a city that has a lot of history but that is very much a working city today - which in itself it something.

From Athens we flew to the island of Santorini, and oh my, Santorini was AMAZING.  I had seen many photos of Santorini, all seemed to be postcard quality with amazing sunsets, amazing ocean views, white and blue domed building. And I am pleased to say it was exactly that.  From the moment we flew overhead the sites were amazing. We got ourselves a taxi which took us to our hotel in Oia.  I could go on about how wonderful it was to be in Santorini, but really the pictures speak words - just look at them! 

We picked up two quad bikes, Mum and Dad were on one and Rach and I on the other.  If anyone is heading to Santorini I would highly recommend quad bikes.  We paid 25 euro per day for each bike and the freedom it offered us was awesome.  We covered so much of the island by bike and being on the bikes was one of my highlights of the whole trip. 

Santorini is known for some of the best sunsets in the world and they were so picturesque, the sun going down and the colours on the buildings were spectacular, what was also spectacular was the number of people that would crowd around on the terraced slopes of the island to watch the sunset - with music playing in the background, was very special.

We found ourselves Greek Gyros which is a meal which is a yum form of a pita bread filled with kebab styled meat (but it also seemed like real meat rather then the reconstituted stuff that the kebabs generally have in NZ), tatziki, a bit of salad and a few fries, all rolled together... YUM.  Let's just say that we ate a fair few of those in our time in Greece :)

One of the days was Mum and Dad's 37th wedding anniversary so we started it off with a champagne breakfast then took of on a mission -  we went from Oia to the opposite end of the island to the light house and then on to Red Beach where us girls went for a swim in the ocean, and then carried on around the island to Kamari before heading back to Fira and on to Oia for the sunset - The plan after that had been that we were going to split up so Mum and Dad could share a romantic dinner together but they decided that wanted us to share it with them, so we all had a nice romantic dinner together to celebrate.

The next day which was our last, we decided to head to Fira and to take the cable car.  The cable car was designed to bring the large number of passengers that disembark their cruise liners for visits to the island and to move large quantities of people quickly.  We took the cable car down and it took about three minutes down.  We then discovered that we had the option of taking donkey's back up.  What an experience, so much fun... We were all on our donkeys and they were not tied together in any way, they just knew the direction in which they had to go.  What made it interesting is that there is no way to control these donkeys you just go with it... if the donkey wants to stop, it stops.  Rachel was the last of us to mount her donkey, but soon sped past the lot of it.  My donkey was a biter so I had a lot of laughs with a couple of other ladies that were going up on donkeys that stuck nearby mine (don't know why, cause they got bitten).  The stairs that we climbed on the donkey were also accessible to people that had decided to walk up and down, and it was a risky decision to walk.  I had one lady yell at me telling me to 'watch where I was going' - I was pleased when the other people around me (also on donkeys) started laughing - if that lady had been a donkey she would not have said that, she would have known that there was no way of controlling them.  I think we all case away with some bruises - donkeys walking you into the walls, or wedging your legs between your donkey and another.. but what a memorable and enjoyable experience - highly recommend the donkeys!

The day we rode the donkeys was also the day that we took a bus from Oia to Fira and then on to the port where we boarded a ferry to travel to Crete.  We worked out that on that one day we had taken 7 forms of transport.  Quad bike, cable car, donkey, walking, car, bus, ferry - that has to be my record for one day.

 We spent one night in Crete and only one day.  We spent the morning exploring the city, doing a bit of shopping in the markets and then the afternoon and evening lazy around on the beach.  We hired ourselves some beach loungers and an umbrella and spent a few hours enjoying our books with a few nice cold beverages.  We left Crete about 10pm so that gave us a chance for one last Greek sunset before heading back to London.

 

 So after Greece it was back to London.  Rachel had booked Mum and Dad an apartment for a week so for that week, I was on Mum and Dad's couch instead of Rachel's :)

The weather was a bit miserable (maybe just typical London) for the first couple of day's so Mum, Dad and I tackled the London Natural History Museum.  It is one big, very interactive and fun museum, so big in fact that we had to go back for a second day to get through more of it, and we we didn't even get through all of it!

We spent the week around London, went out one night for my cousin Ben's birthday.  One of the evenings I had a candidates evening which was an opportunity to get together with the recruitment agency, meet the recruiters and some of the other candidates, OTs and PTs that work through the agency.  They put on food and drinks and was a good opportunity to meet people.

 
On the Friday before Mum and Dad flew out, we went for a day trip to Brighton.  I had booked us a high tea which was enjoyable and then we made our way to the Pier.  Rachel and Steve had warned us of the arcade on the pier and were insistent on a time restriction for playing the games.  It was so much fun!  I found machines of Bejewelled Blitz, I never knew that an addiction to a computer game could ever pay off.  I found Bejewelled Blitz an amazing tool for procrastinating assignments and study while at university and what I mean by pay off is that, I got to win lots of tickets.. tickets that I got to exchange for England souvenirs to sent home with Mum and Dad :) 

The weather in Brighton was really miserable so we spent a bit of time in a pub, Mum and I went on a brief mission to find a store that we wanted and saw some of the landmarks on our way. And then after that was fish n chips - the plan was to have them on the beach (pebble beach) but the weather didn't cooperate so it was fish n chips in a restaurant before heading back to London via the train.

Our last morning together we went to Portobello markets - Mum was in heaven with all the antiques and the trinkets around. Dad got to enjoy some seafood so it was a good morning out.  We had lunch together and mum and dad did their final bit of shopping before we had to head off to the airport.  Bags were checked in and then it was off to the pub for our final drink together.  There were a few tears at the send off - It's nice to know that we have a definite time frame for the next trip home - end of next year for a special wedding :)

It has been two months now since I left NZ and it has been an awesome couple of months.  My travels have ended for the next little while though and it is time for me to find a job.  I spoke to my recruiter earlier in the week and she is in the process of sending out my CV to some jobs, and waiting for the feedback.  At the candidate evening we had a good discussion about how there isn't a lot of work at the moment, but there is a bit.  I have said that I want to be flexible on where I am based and the kind of work that I do, but I do know that she has already sent my CV off for one neuro position.  The weather in London is getting cold though and winter is on it's way... as morbid as it sounds, winter is good for me.  With bad weather comes more illness and slips and falls, hospitals have more admissions and get a bigger budget to deal with the winter pressures.  This means there is more work for locums like me.  I am looking forward to getting my first assignment as the feedback that comes following a stint in a job helps out for future jobs.  I'm also hoping it comes quickly as I am currently sleeping on Rachel and Steve's couch and they have 3 other flatmates.  I'm hoping that once I get a job I will be able to find some accommodation, whether it be a permanent place that I can set up base, or temporary accommodation that are often offered with the locum positions.

So that's where things are at.  Mum and Dad arrived back in NZ from Hong Kong yesterday afternoon NZ time and had to wait for their bags to arrive on the next flight as the bags had missed the connecting flight from Sydney - But they are home and that is the main thing.

I'm hoping my next post will be telling you all that I have a job, so till then xoxo