Greetings from New Zealand!
I’ve just been relaxing and organizing some stuff in my flat today. I’m going out for dinner and drinks with a few of the internationals in a bit. Still need to buy groceries. BUT here’s what has happened so far.
I arrived on Friday, which was Valentine’s Day. We’re about a full day ahead of the United States. We’re 19 hours ahead of where I call home. I traveled 27 hours total between flights and layovers (Chicago>LA>Brisbane, Australia>Wellington, New Zealand). Spent 23 hours in the air overall. Didn’t make any friends on the flight. I spent the LONG flight (14 hours) next to a lady that, upon attempting to start a conversation, wouldn’t talk to me. She also stole my window seat. She had a four-year-old son, who was disruptive and obnoxious for the duration of the flight. I sat next to some elderly people on the other two flights, who also didn’t care about me.
I had a Victoria Bitter with my dinner on the flight, which is an Australian brew. It was pretty awful, as the word “bitter” might have suggested. They later went up the isles with white and red wine, I had some of that. All without seeing ID -_-.
I had this guy waiting for me when I arrived at the airport. Exciting. He drove me to my flat. I immediately realized I left my iPhone in the cab, but he graciously brought it back to me. I then took a shower and slept for 14 hours.
I woke up yesterday and went and bought some essentials. Upon asking for hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol at a department store, the employee’s eyes grew and he asked “for what?!” a passerby told him that I meant bleach. I asked another employee and she told me to see a chemist. Aside from that, I got everything I needed (Except groceries…)
I walked around a bit more and found that the harbor is only about 10 minutes down the road. Beautiful.
Later, I found a girl on my floor, Emma, from Colorado who came in a bigger group, She got a few of them to join us for dinner at Heaven pizza kitchen and then a few more joined us for drinks later.
The bar we went to was really neat. During the day you can sit on bean bags on the lawn, they have a dog that roams around inside, and the bathrooms are covered in comic book pages.
Off to adventure some more!