Let's go chronologically here (yay story time):
My adventure began at Kennedy Airport, where I said goodbye to the parents before getting on a flight to LA, which was an uncomfortable reminder of how rusty I am at long distance flights. Not that bad though. The only real misfortune was my genius idea to plug my plush headphones into the airport audio jack, which,uh, apparently kills them. All for a crappy Helen Hunt movie too. No tragedy, just a material possession.
(You can click on any of the pictures to get a larger version)Killed a few hours in my layover at LAX sprawled out in a corner watching movies on my laptop.
I slept through most of the flight to NZ, which was the first of dozens of blessings to come.
Arrived in Auckland around 5 AM Kiwi time. At this point, the whole process of finding my luggage and getting through customs is a murky dream to me; all I know was it was hassle free. Took an airbus from there to the hostel I had reservations at and got to experience central Auckland right away and proper when I had to lug all my stuff five blocks after mixing up my stop ;-) It is worth noting that at this time I took the most miraculous shower of my life, even though the stall was cramped and the water only shot out in ten second intervals. Deciding sleep was for cowards, I hit up a Starbucks and went right into the three hour orientation on NZ that Bunac (the program that got me my work permit) had set up. After that I wrapped my head around the bus schedule and headed up to the North Shore to visit my potential flatmates, who I had first contacted while in the states through Flatfinder.com Two girls and a guy, between the ages of 20 and 23. We clicked and agreed it was a good fit, and I planned on moving in the following day.
Before that move though, I did a little sightseeing. Checked out Auckland's SkyTower, which is the tallest tower in the Southern Hemisphere at 328m (for reference, the Eiffel Tower is 324).
You get a great sense of Auckland from the top.
This is my first mate in the country, Dan, who was assigned the same room as me about an hour after I arrived. From the UK, super chill. We've exchanged cell numbers and might do some traveling together later in the year through the South Island.
I'm determined to do this before I leave.
Now onto the Flat situation. I think the best way to sum up the whole thing is that its equivalent is meeting your wife on an online dating site; you can't believe it actually worked out this great, but whatever, your in love. As I mentioned before, its located on the North Shore, in a suburb called Beach Haven. (The second I found that detail out I started getting wonderful butterflys in my stomach.) I'll take better pictures of my living arrangements, but to give you a quick, rough idea of my location, this is the view from my room's window.
I know. I'm too lucky. But wait, it gets so much more perfect.
What I learned from my initial meeting with the flatmates was that they are super sociable, love to live it up (they throw pirate parties!!!), and want a flatmate that wants to be just as social and involved in whatever is going on.
I've been adopted guys.
Hours after moving my stuff in, I found myself going out with one of the flatmates, Jo (short for Josephine) and a few of her friends, who are these crazy, fun loving Samoans who I immediately hit it off with. We ended up club hopping until 4 in the morning, where I was constantly assaulted with drunk hugs and told that I was now a "brother for life." To say that my expectations of where I was going to be my second night in the country were exceeded...
So that's life. :-) Great house, great mates, and a job I'm excited about starting on Monday. It's all a dream.
I'll leave you with a video that accurately sums up the accent around here (when they're trashed its more or less another language)
The embedded video seems to be on the fritz, at least at the moment, so here's the link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdVHZwI8pcA
So much love to all of you; I may not be homesick but you're still in my thoughts.
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