…and it’s been 4 days since my last drink.
Actually that’s something of a lie, as it’s been considerably longer than 3 days since I last drank, but the 3 days is notable because that’s how long I’ve been in Dunedin without making it to the pub (or any other kind of drinking establishment for that matter). Our lecture and tutorial schedule is pretty full on (something that Simone tried to explain to me before I left, but why would I listen to my wife??), and so I have seen the road between out motel and the Med school (which happens to take me past the front windows of the two best bookshops in town (which I also haven’t been into)) and the shops in a 1 block radius of the med school (mainly just the supermarket to be honest).
The town itself has actually changed relatively little in the 6 years I’ve been gone. Sure there are a few new buildings around, and some of the old shops have been replaced with new ones (which is sometimes an improvement, and sometimes not) but there are still students everywhere being pretty studentish (which is now actually quite funny to watch from the standpoint of my additional “maturity”), the weather is still quite pleasantly brisk during the day, but gets cold at night or if you sit still in a lecture theatre for too long (like, say, 5 hours of anatomy lectures back to back…). I also had forgotten about the singular joy of getting up in the middle of the night and having to sit down on a glacial toilet seat.
I have also made it back to my favorite Indian restaurant, which still does my favorite dish (and which I suspect will be seeing a fair bit more of me in the coming weeks – especially at $15 for a main with rice), and have scouted out a few of my other favorite haunts of old for visits at some point in the indeterminate future but for the time being I should continue rea-reading about the ankle joint, whose flexor retinaculum seems to be a personal favorite of the examination board. Really if I wasn’t having to work I could be having a lot of fun.