Smelly egg

is the dominant smell of Rotorua. Lonely Planet told me so, yet I was still surprised on rolling in on the coach by just quite how eggy it all was. Every so often, walking down the street, a waft of warm egg will hit you in the face. Lovely. And that is because Rotorua is a geothermal hotspot, filled with bubbling mud, geysers and hot springs. And hydrogen sulphide. Double lovely.

I'm having a great time here, but missing Tim and of course you guys. I don't think I'm cut out for travelling alone any more - I feel very antisocial and old. I'm in a youth hostel, surrounded by 18 year olds! They're like an alien race. Oh god. It's started. The inevitable ageing process. My sister isn't 18 yet! She is like an alien too (and has just done her Oxford interviews for New College and Christchurch - for medicine too. Very exciting! Naturally disappointed she hasn't applied to Magdalen - no accounting for taste.)

I'm updating because I'm at a bit of a loss, really. I haven't worked in ED for 5 days (having been working continuously for 2 weeks, including 3 night shifts). Diving is over for the day, I've done all my Christmas shopping (be excited, Brits! Prepare to get a lot of very exciting, and, perhaps coincidentally, very light presents.) I'm sitting in the sun with some strawberries and a glass of beer and a lot of tofu (I feel, as I am in a youth hostel, tofu is really the order of the day), and no work to do, and I don't really know what to do with myself.

So I've brought all my medical books downstairs (yes, of course I took them on holiday with me) and I am going to read them after I've posted this entry. And then I'm going to make an actual revision timetable for ophthalmology, which I've been dilly dallying about for far too long. And I'm going to check up levels of b-HCG at each stage of early pregnancy.

I know you want my life.

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This is going to be a photoless post as my computer absolutely cannot deal with photos (they are all on Tim's wonderful laptop), given it can barely deal with turning on, turning off, loading google, typing. I underline for emphasis, and to show my computer who is boss (I know it can underline. And italicise, even if it needs a good 3 seconds to think about it each time. It's more indecisive than me in a chinese takeaway - which is to say, it ums and ahs for fricking ages and then does the same predictable thing in the end each time.)

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Newsflash - just as I typed those words - literally as I mocked my computer for being incompetent, the whole thing crashed, disconnected from the internet, and then turned itself off. I kid you not. And then it did it twice more, just to make sure I got the message.

No more italics tonight for Connie.

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So, diving is great.

It's not as freaky as I thought it would be, breathing underwater. The course is also less fun than I thought it would be - it's actually bloody hard work, and so was the e learning, which I blithely thought I'd knock off quickly the day before. Huge mistake! It involved 600 slides involving detailed pressure, depth, nitrogen content, etc calculations, naming all the parts of an oxygen cylinder and the different valve types you can get, and was quite easily the most underestimated thing I'd ever done in my life. I was still going at 22:30 the night before, cramming it.

I got 100% on the test.
So if medicine goes to pieces I can at least do diving!

The course itself is also less fun than I imagined, and involves a lot of UnderWaterSkillz which are also less fun than imagined, like, your instructor turning your air supply off at the bottom of the pool and seeing what you do next, or making you make your regulator (the bit you breathe out of) malfunction and seeing what you do next (I found this deeply unpleasant), and learning 100000000 hand signals. There's not been much swimming around interacting with dolphins and being accepted into their family and learning their language and essentially becoming a mermaid, which is kind of what I secretly dreamed it would all be (I mean, there are no dolphins in Rotorua. I knew this. Yet I still kind of believed I would swim around with dolphins merrily. Why?)  But tomorrow we are going into the lake to do our open water section, and after that I will be a fully certified PADI Open Water Diver!

I'm going to put it on my CV (!)

I can only imagine what specialty applications will think of that.

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Rotorua itself is a very pretty place, a lovely lake and lots of good smells as well as eggy ones, a very gorgeous museum and bath house, and a thermal park right next door to the hostel. So that's good. And I am sharing my dorm with a lot of girls who are very normal and go to bed at 10:30pm, which pleases me. So that's good. And one of them has been to Oxford! But she didn't like it very much (to visit). She said it was a bit too hung up on its traditions - like formal hall. Which surprised me because most people who visit Oxford love that kind of shizzle. I mean, most people think there isn't enough of formal hall. So I was kind of surprised. And then it made me miss Oxford. I guess it wouldn't be too bad to go back to the UK. But....I'd miss NZ. A lot.

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I've spent 10 hours of the last 48 in water.
I feel soggy.
And tomorrow I'm spending the whole day in water. The whole day.
Just thinking about it makes my fingers feel wrinkly.

I guess I'd better make some sandwiches and go to bed.
See you later, alligator
xxx

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