The beginning of our journey...

First off, I want to apologize because I had told some people there were no flea's in New Zealand. I believe I was misinformed and want to set the record straight. There apparently ARE flea's in New Zealand. So, please forgive me for unintentionally lying. OK, now that that is off my chest...

I am writing this blog so whoever wants to keep up with what Drew and I are doing in New Zealand can. I will try to include some New Zealand terminology/history/etc. so you too can experience what New Zealand is like without having to pay all the money. I'm not much of a blog writer/journal keeper sort and I feel like this would also be a good time to apologize to those other bloggers out there I may have made fun of in the past. It's only fair since I now too am a "blogger".

I will have to do some catch up because we have been here almost a week and it has taken me about that long to get this thing going. We arrived in Auckland (which is the largest city...think New York City on a smaller scale) on Wednesday morning and immediately had to go to an orientation with the company that we signed up with to get over here. We were both super tired, but the orientation was very informational and helped us set up a bank account, get a tax number, etc. You are supposed to stay up the whole day and go to sleep at a normal sleeping time, but I couldn't make it and fell asleep around 5:30...I think. Although Drew and I did lots of planning for this trip, the one the we didn't plan was the fact that once we got over here and did not have our cell phones anymore we would have no way of knowing what time it was since neither one of us wears a watch. This made the rest of the night very interesting because we were of course all messed up on our sleep schedule and woke up many times through the night and never knew what time it is. Apparently hostels don't feel that time is very important either because nowhere had a clock. Anyways, it was a long night and I only slightly felt more rested the next morning. The other thing we had to do before we could leave Auckland was buy a car. This was a little overwhelming to say the least. We did lots of searching on trademe.com (which is their version of ebay, but with a better name) but weren't exactly sure the best way to go about it. We also went down to a lot where cars came right off the boat from Japan. They were stacked in there like sardines and when even our taxi driver made a comment about the place I knew we were in for trouble. Luckily, my Dad has raised me well about buying cars (and other things too) and I quickly diverted us from this disaster. So, we did the only reasonable thing we knew to do and called some friends that lived in Tauranga so hopefully they could help us buy a car. And that is how we ended up in Tauranga (which is about 2 1/2 hour drive from Auckland on the East coast). Barry and Lorraine have been graciously letting us stay at their house even though they have been in a middle of shifting (this is what they call moving). One of their friends, Chris, took us out one day and helped us find a car!! We put a bid on the car and at the end of the day found out we were the happy owners of a Nissan Terrano (which is US version of a pathfinder). I will try to put pictures up soon! We also went to Chris and his wife Melinda's house Saturday night to watch the All Blacks vs. the Wallabies rugby game! This was great fun and I love watching Rugby. I have decided the only way to make this game better was if it was played by hobbits. Now, I just have to find some and organize this. Of course they will be called the 1/2 blacks. Hopefully in the next couple of days we will be headed south to Nelson with some stops on the way (snowboarding!?!) but we are having trouble getting a wire transfer for the money to buy the car. It's very hard to find a time when both banks are open to make this happen and since the US is a day behind us it is still the weekend there. Tomorrow is looking hopeful though.

FUN KIWI FACT: Apparently rat tails are making a comeback here in NZ. I saw a couple. Seriously.