New Zealand Dish: Sushi, Rugby, and Forest Meandering

Good news, Craig finally found a bike that may accommodate his freakishly tall frame. We can't wait for it to arrive so we can finally do some mountain biking! That was the best news of the week. Otherwise, the week was fairly uneventful. Craig was participating in a study who's inclusion criteria included "people who can eat as much as they want without gaining weight." Of course Craig fits right in with that one. Needless to say, I did not. So, for 4 days Craig had to weigh and record everything he ate. This was an annoyingly time consuming project. Dinner was the worst. Every vegetable and tidbit of butter had to be weighed. This week, he has to go in for testing early in the morning for 2 days and they give him a free buffet breakfast afterward. I wonder if they know what they're getting into? Anyway, it will be interesting to see what the nutrition experts have to say about Craig's eating habits. We'll keep you posted.

Work is going fine for both of us. I am working on writing an article on business planning for physiotherapy professionals that will hopefully be published in a journal. I've also gotten started on a new project. I now have to research all kinds of statistics about NZ, specifically Dunedin to figure out what kind of physiotherapy clinic the University should open. They have a lot of good ideas and want me to basically tell them which one will work, based on the community's needs and what other services are already out there. So, it's kind of interesting but stats are not easy to find.

Craig continues to work on writing some grants. And he was just awarded a grant for Proprioception Testing. Other than that, things are pretty much status quo with his job.

Oh! Some very important news regarding Craig's facial hair. November is called "Movember" here and all men are supposed to grow a mustache to raise money for charity. Not only is Craig planning to participate, but has upped the ante by telling my dad that he will grow a mustache if my day shaves his. Now, my father has had his mustache since he was like, twelve, so this will be huge. The bet is currently under consideration by the elder(ly) party. Be sure to check the blog at the end of November for results and pics of this!

We had another nice, relaxing weekend. Just hung out Friday, Farmers Market Saturday morning where we branched out and sampled some new treats. First was the Lamb Kebab. It was nasty. I had one bite and it was pure fat. Craig finished it but was unimpressed. I had to run over and buy an apple turnover to get the taste out of my mouth (good excuse, eh?). The turnover was yummy. Hot out of the frier. Healthy too. We are slightly concerned that there may no longer be any apples for sale at the market. Pickings were slim this time and we think they may be done for the season. Time will tell but if that's the case, I don't know what we'll do. We can't afford apples at the grocery store! It will be a major budgetary setback.
Saturday evening, we were very excited when we received a phone call from Taryn, our long lost friend from Pittsburgh. We got to chat with her for awhile and caught up on the Pitt goings on. We love to hear from our friends and don't get to chat often enough.

After that, we headed to the Octagon for dinner, at a Japanese restaurant called Jizo. We had some awesome fresh sushi and Craig had his beloved japanese curry. Thank goodness we didn't have to weigh his food that day! After we ate our fill, we bar hopped (all right, we only went to 2 bars) to watch the All Blacks game. We can't afford more than 2 beers each thought so we walked home at halftime. Before we left the second bar (The Bog), we watched a hammered girl fall into some other people's table, spilling all of their drinks on them. So that was entertaining. Anyway, the All Blacks beat The Wallabies (Australia) to win the Tri-Nation Cup, a pretty big deal in the rugby world. All in all, it was a good night.

Sunday brought with it our warmest temps yet. I even wore shorts! This is the first time we have gone out of the house not wearing long sleeves (3 layers of them) and pants. So, we took advantage of the sunny skies and hiked up to Mt. Cargill, the hike we didn't complete last weekend due to cloud cover. This time we made it to the top and were rewarded with some phenomenal views of the city, peninsula, and pacific ocean.

On the way back down, we took a side trail up to Butter's Peak for some rock scrambling and more views.

After that hike, we hadn't had enough so we found another hike to a "hidden waterfall" that we wanted to do. So, we attempted to find the trail but ended up on some other random trail through some really green, lush, jungly forest. We did actually find a waterfall, but not the one we thought we were going to find. It was a really cool hike though. And, driving back down the road toward home, we spotted a very large sign, right on the road, that stated "Hidden Waterfall" with a big fat arrow pointing the way. So, that's for next time.