Facebook

Facebook is really helping me out here. I got in touch with an old co-worker who mentioned that she stayed in NZ for an extended period-- I got a wealth of information out of her. Namely, hostels on the south island are really cold and you have to pay a premium for heat (shoot!). Also, the drive from Auckland to the south island is so long that it's preferable to fly. Also good to know. I wanted to get plane tickets this week and just figure things out later, but the rigid part of me really wants a plan! I checked the Ministry of Education's website and there's still no SLP job openings. Man I wish I could have taken that Auckland job that was available over Christmas-- if only I had known about it.
Right now I think that a good plan would be to just live in Christchurch or Wellington-- the two cities that we hear are the best-- and settle down so I can get an internship in a hospital setting and Bryce might get a little job with snowboarding or cars. I'm studying up on all my old med speech notes and I have more observations planned. I've got to get myself marketable!

Life isn't a rehearsal!!

I'm trying to learn how to be a medical SLP so that I can be more marketable (esp in NZ). Today I went to a nursing home in Renton to follow an SLP for a few hours. S. was great and even invited me to observe her for a whole weekend in a few weeks! While she was writing up notes at a nurse's station, we could overhear the news broadcasting from a nearby TV area. The news was about the stimulus package and the economy... S. looked at me and said something like, Can you believe all this happening? I told her that we were taking off to NZ and weren't going to wait around for the economy to get better; it could take years. She basically told me, Good for You and then said that this mess has made her realize that you aren't really as secure as you think you are, which she said was kind of freeing in a way.
I like that way of looking at things, and told her so. She said her sister has a quote,
Life isn't a rehearsal!!

Later we went over a client list that showed that someone just passed away over the weekend. The computer software actually stated, "Expired." Not a very compassionate term... S. was unsure of how I would react to that and just looked at me. I said, "Oh she went to the play."

filtered sunlight

On the radio yesterday I heard that the weather would be "filtered sunlight." That's a nice sounding phrase for the worst type of sky at all: High Clouds Sky. yuck.

The day started off right with blue sky and bagels at Hot Bagels in Ravenna. We walked around Green Lake, got Sarah a souvenir in Fremont, and tried to get burgers at Gordo's in Ballard but found it was closed! We checked out Twinline Motorcycles in Georgetown and ended up at Starbucks in Alki to read for a bit. The day was just sunny enough to make me really, really dread the forecasted rain for the next day. I sat in a parking lot in West Seattle reading and watching the blue sky until it got dark.


I desperately want to live somewhere where I don't have to feel so depressed on a sunny day because I know how fleeting it is.

Hawaii?!

A woman at one of my schools is married to a Kiwi. I talked to her today about how she gets to NZ; she said that since she has kids, they break up the long flight by stopping over in Hawaii. Now THERE's an idea!! Bryce and I looked up flight info and it's totally feasible; just a few 100 bucks each for us to fly there. We're pretty excited because losing out on our Summer by spending it in Southern Hemisphere's winter sounded a bit dreary. Hawaii might make us feel A LOT better. We're going to see if we can use one of our timeshares in Honolulu to make the trip even cheaper. Plus the trip will coincide nicely with our first wedding anniversary!