Lots of fun and headaches

Last week was great! Still on orientation, although some appointments were cancelled. No worries, if everything that was planned for this morning is cancelled, we'll take you to the Christmas Shop! Yeah, I know, my colleagues are amazing! The Christmas Shop is a wonderful place, where you can buy X-mas decorations almost throughout the year. I've certainly spent some money over there...
On Friday we had our annual Formal Mental Health Ball, which is basically just a big party with supper and everyone in fancy clothes. One other thing I've learned that night is that supper is something like a walking dinner. Everyone was supposed to bring something to eat, and I, under the impression that 'supper' is just another word for a late dinner, brought this lovely pasta-salad with smoked salmon and cucumber. Unfortunately, no cuttlery (knives, forks,...) was provided, so I ended up eating pasta-salad for the rest of the weekend. Ah, these culture differences...

After being a good girl not drinking too much at the ball and going home at 1.30 am, I woke up early (8.30) and decided to surprise the home front. My webcam still has to arrive in NZ along with my other stuff, so all I could do until now was hear and look at my family using Skype while I typed in messages. When I was talking about this to one of my splendid colleagues, she suggested that I could borrow her webcam, which she wasn't using, until my own webcam arrived. Everyone should have colleagues like these! So Saturday morning I astonished my family with my sudden appearance. They decided I'm getting really spoiled here, and they're absolutely right. I'm enjoying every minute of it!
Next on my list for Saturday was the Santa Parade in the town centre. Because of heavy winds they decided not to hold the parade, and it was postponed to Sunday. Unfortunately for all the kids in Invercargill, the wind had not changed much on Sunday, so no Santa Parade this year!. The child in me is very disappointed...
The best part of my weekend however was the meeting with my future cat. Yes, that's right, I'm getting a cat. Another one of my colleagues (don't you just love them!) has a nice cat that delivered three kittens 4 weeks ago. They are adorable! I'm getting an all grey one, and I'm in the process of looking for a name, and getting really excited about having a kitten. The week before Christmas she's coming to her new home with me.

After that day the headaches started to come, and though I felt better on Sunday, Monday morning I felt terrible. After a long internal battle between calling in sick or stop being such a wuss, I finally got dressed and went to work. I spent less than 5 minutes there, went home again and slept 'till noon. The next day wasn't much better, and after calling in sick I slept 'till noon again. I think the lovely rainy weather, the small amount of warm clothing brought in my suitcase, a lack of good night sleep (due to heavy winds, rain and hail, and to the excitement of using that webcam) and the huge amount of new information, people and culture finally got to me. So next weekend, I'll probably just have one thing planned: setting up my X-mas tree.