travel destination? Dunedin

With one week left of summer it's inevitable that I find myself thinking about the three months that have passed.

Do I regret staying in Dunedin and not spending my last student vacation to travel to an exotic faraway place?

... No. Not in the least. I have loved enjoying this city, and what's more, getting to know it in a completely new and different way: through my running. Rediscovery is, I think, what they call it. And it's like I've fallen in love with this stunning place all over again. I don't think you truly get to know a place unless you've run through its streets, its parks, its hills, its beaches... Even the beach at St Clair/St Kilda -- a place I have been to countless times over the past six years -- felt completely new to me as I found myself running along the water last week for the very first time. And what an incredible, truly incredible, experience it was.

Do I regret taking on such a relatively big clinical trial for my summer research project, not nearly close to being finished with only a week left?

... No. Not in the least. Catching up with all my study patients this past week (and week to come) has been a real joy and privilege, hearing their holiday stories and of their summer adventures. I sat in equal parts laughter and disbelief as a patient told me about her dog who got bitten on the arse by a cat from which her dog contracted... necrotizing fascitis! Yup, flesh-eating disease. And if the dog had been bitten anywhere else but the arse, he would have been put down, go figure. There's a scene from "You've Got Mail" when Meg Ryan's character is reflecting on the "quietness" of her life, and how so much of what she sees reminds her of what she's read in a book when, shouldn't it be the other way around...? Unlike Meg Ryan's character, I have loved the fact that so much of the randomness and utter hilarity of this summer are stuff books should be made of!

And...

... I have loved forming an addiction to running out of doors.

... I have loved learning how to deal with the complete bureaucracies of setting up a clinical trial in a big, public, tertiary hospital.

... I have loved all the patients I have met throughout my study and becoming a part of their lives, however small and short-lived it may have been.

... I have loved the writing I have done over this summer, and the progress I have made on my first book... and I still have one week to finish it completely.

... I have loved growing in friendship and becoming more connected to so many people who I knew of, but hardly knew. Much like my rediscovery of this city, I have been surprised, in a most simple and beautiful way... which proves you don't have to travel the world to meet fascinating, interesting, brilliant people; all you need is an open mind and an open heart.

... But most of all I have loved how, as I sit here reflecting on the time that has passed, I am not the same person I was three months ago. I have allowed myself to change and grow with the events, the circumstances, the relationships, the dramas of this summer, and I know I have adapted and become a better person for it... I think. :) I was afraid that by doing "the same old thing" with my very last summer vacation as a student I'd be wasting such a special gift... but now I realise I couldn't have spent this time better any other way.