It seems appropriate that our last week in Ranfurly has been the best week in Ranfurly! At least in my opinion! Wehen it comes to Ranfurly, we have a routine: I usually can't get into our flat until about noon and we get here at about 8:30 am, so I have some time to kill. When the weather is great that's not a problem, but now it's winter and well, usually not so great. Fortunately, Monday was an exception and it was a beautiful-all be it cold morning.
With hours to kill, I decided that I wanted to spend the morning in St. Bathans. We had been there in
summer and I was curious to see what it looked like covered in snow with the sun rising over the mountains at the early hour of 9 am. Shortly after I got to this sleepy little town and parked by Blue Lake (only car there), I was greeted by an adorable puppy that acted like he'd been waiting for me all morning. After our initial hellos of him jumping up on me and giving me giving kisses, I set out to do there little trail around the lake and the pups decided that he was going to come with me. After walking a couple hundred meters the dog (I thought of him as Buddy) took off and started barking like mad. Immediately my mind goes to some crazy scenario that the dog was pulling a Lassie and trying to get me to help his owner that had fallen in the snow or something, so I hurry towards the barking and of course it's nothing. Well, not nothing, it's his tennis ball. We spent the rest of the morning walking on the trail, playing fetch and enjoying the scenery.
I finished the trail and thought about going to the
Vulcan Hotel for a hot drink, but they were closed and it was still kind of early to go back and well, long story short, I was manipulated by an adorable dog, who even was the same colors as BJ-although a little bigger, to do the trail again. What can I say, I had a great morning! Just don't tell BJ I cheated on him. Of course right when I got back, I found out that I could have gotten into our flat first thing in the morning-I'm glad I missed that message!
I didn't really have any plans for the week, so when Keith called and said Elaine (who works at the clinic) was wondering if I would be interested in an all day felting class at the local art center, I said of course! I had been introduced to felting by Sandi, one of the locums docs wives, who like me had thought about trying to learn how to knit and gave up after about 30 seconds. Felting is quite a bit easier, with more immediate gratification-aka more my style. What we learned how to do is called Nuno felting, a 15 step process Japanese felting technique that combines shear fiber (such a silk) and wool to make lightweight garments and other items, like scarves, which is what I made. This is a very wet and labor intensive project that takes pretty much all day. Like most of the ladies there, I really didn't know what what we were doing, which just made it more fun.
The above pic is about half way though the process...I should have taken one at the end! I will at some point. Since it was all day, food was provided-and not just lunch-snacks, truffles, tea, other homemade goodies-these ladies really know how to put on an meal and I came away from it with a recipe for truffles!
We had been meaning to go curling in Naseby pretty much since we got here. While they have indoor curling year-round, we were hoping this late in winter there would be outdoor curling-but they didn't! Keith always gets Wednesday afternoons off in Ranfurly, but he's still on call. Of course, as soon as I had made the booking for 2pm, the phone started ringing off the hook. We had to change our booking and felt very lucky his phone didn't ring the whole time we were curling.
As soon as you get to the
Naseby Indoor Curling Rink, you get sent upstairs to watch a video to teach you about curling-good thing since we really didn't know a thing about the sport. While it is informative, I think they could have talked a little more about scoring-we kind of didn't get that part. After watching the video, we got one on one instruction as to how to slide the stone. There are a few different methods of delivery and anyone who has ever seen Keith bowling knows that he has been preparing for the slide technique (like the do in the Olympics) for his whole life. The woman instructing was shocked at Keith's natural talent-she can't even do the slide-'I end up on my arse every time!'
Since real curling is 4 people agaist 4 people and we were only 2 people, we just had fun learning. It is actually really hard to get the stone all the way down, without over shooting the target-by about the 4th round we were getting close! Apparently we were pretty good though since we could get the stones all the way down without sweeping, although we did sweep just for the fun of it. I wonder if Keith will get called up to the U.S Curling team? ;-)
I did not get the slide down, but still rocked at curling!
Keith has been working Maniototo Hospital and clinic while in Ranfurly. Although I think he would argue that what they call a hospital is barely a hospital, it seems to work for them! All the time we're there, Keith is on call. I know it always hangs over him when we're there and whenever we plan to go out and do anything is when Keith gets called (like curling!). The people at the clinic have been really great and Keith always comes home with pretty crazy stories, so it's always been a good time!
And they have a pretty nice view from the hospital. I think I would just look outside all day and not get any work done!
After a good bye lunch with the ladies from the clinic, we were off. Only three more weeks of work for Keith!
