I spent last week in Sydney as part of the site visit team for Sydney U vet school. I did have roast beef for dinner a couple of times! I didn't really go to market but figured it would be rude to suggest Scott was a little piggy, even though he did stay home.
I am still an AVMA site team member so help ensure that the AVMA accredited schools are meeting the standards agreed to. Schools get reviewed every 7 years. Now that I am in Australia, I get fewer options but Sydney was a good fit. Sydney also gets reviewed by the local group (AVBC) and by the British group (RCVS) since they do have students from Australia, NZ, North America and Britain. The AVMA requires summary documents with 100 pages of reading and 100 pages of tables max. The other groups have different formats and requirements. Putting them all together made for a heck of a lot of reading and triangulating. After doing that initial reading, we asked for even more reading. Finally, we go on site, talk to everyone we can talk to and visit all the facilities. Then we try to summarize everything for the Councils overseeing each team. My brain was very full and now it is very empty. A few more steps before we are totally done but most of the way there.
The team had members from Great Britain, Canada, the US (including a human physician), Australia, and New Zealand. Plus we had amazing staff support from both the US and Australia. Sydney gave it their all, as well, making sure we had access to everyone and everything needed. Because of the focus on student safety, one of the things we do is check to make sure things are in date (drugs, first aid kit supplies, etc). As I was headed to my gate, I had an almost overwhelming need to check out the expiration dates on these items:
Luckily I controlled myself. I was still in my official formal gear for the exit interview with University leadership so felt a bit overdressed for the commuter flight to Merimbula. [I did get through secruity with my name badge still on ...] Because it is a small plane, you have a good 2 out of 3 chances for a window. I got the ocean side and spent most of the flight (1 hour) watching for whales. Saw evidence of several breaches! They were not in this pic but I still thought this view of a harbor near Sydney was cool.
Scott did go to the market while I was gone and got food stuff he avoids when I am here:
He used the bread flour to make some very decent looking rolls (that he claims taste horrible).
We had another site visitor married to someone with celiac; they were under direction to eat "all the things" while away. Scott did also make some muffins and a spinach pie that I could enjoy!
The boys did attempt a selfie but Dubya is still figuring out how to manage to get his good side in the pic:
I spent my first day back doing laundry, playing in the gardens (things are sprouting!) and stalking birds with the camera. We hope to move the sheep into a different paddock today and probably need to get back into regular housework, as well as putting away all the travel stuff. We have no travel plans for the week which is very nice.
Scott did get some great yellow robin pics while I was gone-
And he found a new visitor - eastern shrike-tit. It's only relations are the western and northern shrike-tits.
The yellow thorn bills are back!
The king parrots came through the backyard yesterday, as well.
Anyone up for doing a beak trim?
This little piggy is happy to be home!
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