Tourist Sites

Heya,
We realized that the trip will soon be over and decided to make our way out of the mountains and over to the Tasman Sea, we spent some soggy days on the West Coast doing day trips through Arrowtown, Wanaka, Hawea Conservation park, Glacier Country (Franz-Josef Glacier AWESOME ) and Paparoa National Park. Updated the Flickr site so there are a few new ones on there. Nothing too eventful to report :o) We just finally made our way into Nelson, a funky and artistic town about the size of Corvallis but is actually pretty big for a town around here, and will be exploring the area by bike tomorrow. We have the marvelous campervan



for another 10 days and then its 5 more in Christchurch settling everything up before we head out. But before all of our sad goodbyes to New Zealand we will be doing one more track big track here... The Abel Tasman, just north of Nelson. Its all coastal so it can also be kayaked (very cool) and it should be about three days starting with yet another water taxi (hooray). Can't wait for the track, we'll be posting pictures soon...

Oh yeah, and Ev hears back from his job interview with the WA conservation people on the 14th so fingers crossed :o)
see ya,
nicole and ev

So we've been living in the east bay for a few months now. I'm pretty sure that we've gotten most of the dorky tourist stuff out of the way by now (pictures follow)... we went to some giants games, rode the cable car, biked around golden gate park and the reservoir, saw the blue angels at fleet week, and have generally been eating way too much good food.

I am currently working at UCSF in the radiology department. I'm working with a group studying osteo-arthritis, there are three or four projects going on at the moment, for the most part I am just helping out wherever I am needed. It is lots of computer work and wet lab work but from time to time I get to do something out of the ordinary like sit in on a surgery and collect samples (read: pieces of cartilage). I thought it might gross me out, but really its pretty interesting to see how they cut the knee or hip up and then re-build it.

I was going to put a bit in here about Ev, but he's saying that he will write his own this week so lets see if that happens :o)

More than anything we're just getting ready for the next adventure, which is Maui in about a week. We have Jenny, Kevin, and Ryan all coming along so it should be a great time. More about that when we get back...

peace!
-nicole