School started!

In fact, school has already started for 2 weeks!... This semester, both Hannah and I are teaching a lot of classes. We are fortunate that even though there is a cut on budget, we are still given more tutor slots than most of our friends. On top of tutoring and demonstrating for labs, Hannah is also helping with disabilities. The labs that we are tutoring and demonstrating this semester includes Biosci 101 (Essential Biology), 107 (Cellular Processes and Development), 91F (Foundation to Biology). I am also working on a couple of field trips - Biosci 104 (North-head field trip) and Marine 202. Thus, it looks like both of us are going to have a full semester.

On a daily basis, we try to wake up early in the morning (4.45am!), do a quick 30mins work-out and take the bus to the ferry terminal. We are working on a exercise routine call T-25, which only takes about 25mins per day. Although it is only a short 25mins, it is still hard, and there are some moves which are kicking both Hannah and my butt.. We had decided to start taking the bus to save some cost of petrol, and at the same time do some exercising / walking.... Hannah does most of the cooking, while I take care of the doggies (their meals, poop-picking etc). It seems the roles and duties of both of us just fall into places quite nicely.

In between, I also have to find limited amount of time to work on my PhD research. At the moment, I am busy analysing the data from the previous experiment (which I hope to get some results soonish, in a couple of weeks). I have to go back to Taiwan again in June for another set of experiment, and at the same time attend the Asia-Pacific Coral Reef Symposium (APCRS) 2014. I had managed to "impress" the panel enough to gain a scholarship/ grant for the conference, and I would be competing with 9 other selected students from around world. Not feeling much at the moment, but I am sure I would be getting more nervous as the dates gets nearer.

I started working with Jet on a more regular basis... we re-start our training from basic sit, down, come and stay. I wanted to go back to Schutzhund training, but there is just so much drama going on in the club!.. I will talk more about that after I go back for training in April, and see what really happened there!

Haven't done any diving since we were back. However, the water at Enclosure Bay looked really tempting the last week when we were there taking seawater for the fish tank. Hannah and I talked about it and we decided that due to limited budget, we would do more shore diving from Waiheke or follow the locals (a few people on Waiheke have come together to dive together on a regular basis) out to nearby waters.

Here it is - quick summary on daily events... now back to marking papers and preparing documents for student/ spouse visa application submission tomorrow!
(NB- and as always there will probably be tons of errors due to non-checking!... sorry about that)