First Day

After two flights and a layover, we are finally in New Zealand!  It is now Tuesday January 17th at 8:30 am.  This is only our second day.  Yesterday was our first day here and it felt like 3 days.  We took off on Saturday night around 10pm and flew 10 hours and 30 minutes straight through the night on AirPacific.  Eddie and I had a little bit of trouble sleeping on the plane. Tylanol PM and some pillow stealing helped us finally get some sleep.   We landed in Fiji at 5:30 am (8:30am in California).  We had a 3 and a half hour layover and then took another 3 hour flight to Auckland, New Zealand where Eddie's friend Mel picked us up at 12:30 pm.  We had a laugh when Eddie tried to go to the driver seat to be a passenger.  We sure do have a lot to get used to.  New road rules, driving on the other side of the street, driving on the other side of the car, looking the other way when we cross the street, pedestrians don't have the right of way, the letters "w" and "h" next to each other are pronounced "f", and the eggs are not refrigerated in the grocery store.

Mel took us to a hill top called Maungawhau-Mt. Eden (remember, pronounce that "wh" like "f").  There is a crater where Mt. Eden erupted forming part of the island long ago. We had a great view of the city of Auckland and of course the ocean.  Here are some pictures:

The crater left after the eruption of Mt. Eden and Auckland city in the background

And surrounding areas of New Zealand

A map that gives the direction of LA

Auckland city

This is the New Zealand Christmas tree!

This is Mel enjoying the view

We went to dinner with Mel, her husband Tyson, and three of their friends Caleb, Rachel, and Benjamin.  They took us to an Asian restaurant called Barilla Dumplings.  They say it's Auckland's best kept secret.  Our new friends and us were the only white people in the whole restaurant.  You can get 20 dumplings for $9 and they are SO good.  We got pork with cashew nut. You dip the dumplings in a mixture of chili sauce and either soy vinegar or soy sauce.  I liked it the best with the soy vinegar.  Eddie liked the soy sauce better.  We talked and laughed a lot at dinner.  We talked about American and New Zealand accents.  It's funny to think we have an accent to them.  When we first got to New Zealand I thought Mel (who is American) had a bit of an accent just from living in New Zealand for the past year but the more we talked to people the more her and our American accent stood out to me.  It's an interesting feeling to suddenly become aware of your own accent.  We learned that they don't say soda.  Soda is known as "soft drinks" in stores and restaurants but at home they call soda "fizzies".  After dinner we went to the movies to watch Sherlock Homes.  The movies are $17 NZ dollars (which is about 13 US dollars). I couldn't stay awake in the movie since it ended just before midnight (3 am in california).  We slept GOOD last night.

I weened myself off of coffee before I came here because I heard that they don't drink coffee over here.  I am sitting here drinking "coffee" that Mel made me.  They love coffee over here and have some of the best coffee in the world but what they call coffee, we call espresso.  They don't drink drip coffee here.  They all have the most disgusted look on their face when you mention drip coffee.  When Mel first moved here, she bought a drip coffee maker so she could have coffee every morning and all her roommates and Tyson made fun of her.  That machine only lasted 3 days before she replaced it with an espresso maker.  They are right.  The espresso is so good and this is just home brewed.  Tyson told me as soon as I get a chance to go to a cafe and get something called a Flat White.  I can't wait to try it.  I don't think I will ever go back to drip coffee again.

Eddie and I have a big day ahead of us.  Mel is a tattoo artist in the city so she is going to take us to work with her today so we can roam the city, find a car, and get phones.  We are having so much fun already!