Slodgey and Kiwi-ville

I've been in New Zealand for 12 hours and have already said "Malo" twice. I'm desperately trying to retract my verbal hodge-podge from Tonglish to a more neutralized, understandable version of English. I actually think it'll help to thicken up my Southern accent a bit, as it will force me out of Tonglish and have heard twice in the last week that a Southern accent in a girl is cute. (Watch out, darling Kiwis, I've a lasso with my south'an charm!) Right. Anyway.
So I'm in Kiwi-ville for Medical leave. For speculative reasons, my right arm (literally, from hand to shoulder,) is total crap. Numbness, tingling, dull aches and sharp pains have occurred over the last several months after I took a few graceless falls in the beautiful but dangerous pathways of 'Eua's rainforest.
I took the roughest flight of my life (turbulence was a total bia last night,) but Noah and the Whale and Billie Holiday kept my hand somewhat-calmly gripped around my (free!) glass of Pinot as I rotated between cold sweats and bouts of nausea. But we landed, I exchanged my per diem for colorful New Zealand dollars, and grabbed a cheeseburger from Mickey D's before hopping in the shuttle and dragging my yawning face into the hotel where I crashed in a fluffy white bed with pillows and a real mattress and a fluffy-but-not-too-hot comforter.
Clean Life. Sigh.
This morning the continental breakfast nearly led me to grabbing a bigger bag to stuff in pastries and fruits when I realized i was being a bit faka-Tonga and needed to just get my cereal, my small pastry, and two slices of beautifully crisp honeydew melon. I hopped over to the hospital, spent an hour under different machines (including an MRI and an x-ray thingy in which they shot dye into my shoulder joint, where the middle-aged doctor with awesome Where's Waldo glasses told me my shoulder would feel a bit slodgey the rest of the day.)
So far, I've had 2 good meals, including my current vegetable quiche with peppermint tea.



So technically, my day is far from slodgey. The MRI guy--the voice of Oz, of sorts--was extremely nice, they played my requested folk music (I didn't actually request it, but they had the beautiful manners to ask!), and I chilled in the tight tube while Clean Life technology buzzed, beeped, and vibrated all around me. Toward the end I got restless because, let's face it, ADD is definitely a possibility, but all was well. Especially when I got to meet MRI Tech Guy. :) (Unfortunately, I forgot to lather on the Southern accent.)



This evening I'll have some Nerve Conduction Studies done on my elbow (silly ulnar nerve) at another hospital, so until then I'm relaxing my slodgey shoulder, enjoying Clean Life, and studying maps, brochures, and such to plan my adventuring that will start tomorrow!

Slodge off you slodgey brutes!
(And feel free to join me if you like.)