Tickets!

Whoever thought booking tickets would be so frustrating! Jody and I started yesterday, and I truly thought it wouldn't take too long, after all, I'd researched the airlines etc... already and knew the best place to go. BUT... turns out that Air New Zealand only flies to San Francisco on certain days, and on those days, and those days only, the flight leaves at 5:15pm. On all other days, the flights go to Los Angeles and leave at 9:30pm. This latter flight forces you to have a really long layover in LAX (about 8 hours) and then overnight flights to places such as Chicago or.. worse... having a long overnight layover in Chicago. I was not having "our girls" staying in an airport overnight, especially not in Chicago!

So, after emails to the dean, and her emailing heads of department, we reorganized the schedule (again) to allow the girls to leave a day later than the most recent plan. It means they basically lose a whole extra week of school (funnily enough, they don't mind!! LOL), but Jody and I were a little concerned that we might lose the goodwill of their teachers. Anyway... the dean thinks this is such a great opportunity we should grab every experience we can... so we are.

Sooooo.... we are now ticketted! Moreover, we met (all four of us, eventually) on Thursday and got a lot of our stuff organized. I think we have nearly a bazillion folders now... all blue of course (and, thanks to Jody, all the RIGHT blue - I hadn't even known there WAS a right blue!).

I started looking up car rentals this afternoon, then decided it was a better idea to just go home! So, here I am... still obviously with my mind on the NZ trip, but at least I'm sitting here in comfort thinking!

Universities and Grant

I am still reeling from the fact that we have been awarded an extra grant so that we can also study more of what is happening in New Zealand universities regarding undergraduate (and some graduate) teacher education. It means Jody and I will be staying an extra three weeks in New Zealand. At first, I thought this would be plenty of time; now I realize that we're going to be working really hard to get what we need done during this time period. Still, it will add another dimension to our study.

Our team has settled in well. I think we've all worked out what we're doing for the moment, and progress is definitely being made. There is still an awful lot of data collection that needs to be done prior to take-off, but we seem to be making good progress so far.