Now that we're a bit more settled I thought I'd send out a mass email letting everyone know how me and Ashley are doing in our new home. I’m copying that email to my blog too for anyone who’s not on my email list.

I am writing this email from a little basement suite owned by Ashley's friend Jackie in Blockhouse Bay, which is a suburb of Auckland. The area around me is fairly hilly, and everything is alive and in bloom, seeing as it's high summer now. There are lots of birds, bugs, trees, and flowers that I don't know the names of, and I'm looking forward to learning them. There are also people from places and speaking languages that we don't encounter a lot in Vancouver, which is pretty cool. Overall Auckland is a pretty multicultural city, similar to Vancouver in that sense. Everything is so lush and green, with palm trees everywhere. I really like the weather because it can go from really sunny to cloudy and rainy in a flash. But it doesn't get cold. It's often quite hot out while it's raining, actually, so that's usually pretty refreshing. It took a bit of getting used to when we first got here, because the humidity is a lot higher than we're used to, and that can make it quite muggy. So even when it's like 22 out or something, it can feel like closer to 30. We take care to wear sunscreen almost all the time, since there is less pollution here, but the hassle is worth it- the air is so fresh and beautiful here!

Our airport experience was typical but fairly smooth. We checked in to Sea-Tac airport with lots of time and managed to get all our luggage through security with no problems. We had carefully packed and weighed all our bags on a very accurate bathroom scale borrowed from one of Betty's neighbors, and lucky for us each bag was just under 50 lbs, which is the cutoff allowed for checked bags. So we said goodbye to four of our six pieces of luggage, and hefted the other two, with our laptop bags, along with us on our first flight. We were excited and not tired, since it was only four in the afternoon, so we enjoyed that flight, looking out the windows and talking about our adventures to come. Once we landed in Los Angeles, we had a three-hour layover, so we had time to eat, go to the bathroom, stretch our legs, and check in for our next flight, which would take us to Nadi, Fiji.

We had a minor heart attack at this point. When we checked in for our Fiji flight the lady told us that we were only allowed a maximum of 15 lbs for our carry-ons or they would have to be checked- the two carry-ons we each had were at least double that. When we had been researching airport requirements, we had found out that if we had to check any bags in excess of the two each we received for free, we would have to pay upwards of $400 per bag! So we were momentarily very worried that we would suddenly have to fork out a lot of money to keep our bags with us, or else throw them in the garbage right there in LA, since we obviously didn't have anyone to leave them with. I was so relieved when the woman said she wasn't going to charge us a thing- apparently we're allowed two checked bags per flight, not just in total. So that was a happy turn of events after all, and we got relieved of two more bags, making our further travels easier.

The ride from LA to Nadi was just shy of ten hours, and because of that the plane was bigger, so Ash and I had to share our set of seats with one other person. Ashley had the window seat, and I was wedged in between her and a man from Toronto. That really wouldn't have been so bad, except that because our seats were tucked under the overhead compartment, it was really hot where the two of us were sitting, but everyone else on the plane seemed cold! We literally sweated our way through much of the ride, but the stewardesses were nice and we were fed and watered regularly. The in-flight movie choices weren't great, so we watched one of our own DVDs and one of the in-flight movies, Fame, which we'd seen before but didn't like that much. We also tried to sleep, and managed to for some of the ride. But there was also a lot of turbulence at times, particularly when we were over the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and I was a bit scared because it was quite bumpy and the airplane would sometimes suddenly fall a few meters quickly, which made the pit of my stomach jump and made me feel like we were going to crash. But I decided to ignore it, because there was nothing to be done about it, so I decided to think of it as a bumpy car ride, and I managed to sleep for a good chunk of the flight.

We landed in Nadi in the middle of the night, and it was very hot! In addition to it being very hot, it was very humid, so the air was extremely muggy and we had to stand in a long line to get checked in for our next flight. Even though we had a three-our layover in Nadi, much of our time was spent in that line, and there were a few jerks who had to argue with the customs agents about how their line wasn't moving, and so for a while our line didn't move at all to be "fair," even though Ashley and I were about two metres from the security booth. But finally we got through, and we each had a nap on the very uncomfortable airport waiting-room seats. The sun rose, and it was beautiful- palm trees and sand, and you could just see the crystal-blue ocean. It was still really hot!

The ride from Nadi to Auckland was only three hours, and we were pretty excited by this time. I was impressed that we had taken off and landed (both of which I hate) safely five times, and we only had one more to go, and I looked out the window almost the entire flight, because it was so beautiful. The water was a gorgeous cerulean blue colour, and you could see patches of reef everywhere, and little white fluffy clouds were floating just above the surface the whole way. We were too high up to see anything else more detailed, but the weather was gorgeous and the view the whole way was just so pretty.

When we first caught sight of the small islands that lie off New Zealand's coast, we got really excited. Then New Zealand itself came into view- I could sort of recognize some shapes of the land from the maps I've looked at about a million times by now, so that was cool. I could easily see why the Maori call this place Aotearoa- land of the long white cloud. It really did look like that! As we started getting closer and a bit lower, we could see boats out in the water, which was also that beautiful colour, and the land was so green! You could just see nothing but green for miles, and coastline and beach everywhere, gorgeous expanses of beach that were totally empty for some unfathomable reason. We mostly flew over the rural area at first, and saw lots of farms. The plane flew low over a huge lake with lots of sediment in it, so it was this rich sort of champagne colour, and then the runway was right on the water and we touched down for the last time- finally home, and so glad to be!

Customs wasn't bad at all. We went first to one check-in guy, who basically just asked us a couple of very basic questions and then stamped our visas. Then we went to a second area that was more complex, where we had to pick up all our bags and take them through security. But even that wasn't bad, they basically just put all our bags through an x-ray machine and that was it. We didn't even have to open them. They had opened a couple on their own, but that was fine- one of them had Ashley's camera and our portable hard drive in it, so we'd sort of expected that. Overall, entering the country wasn't too big a deal at all. A month or so ago we had booked a shuttle to pick us up at the airport, and they were waiting just outside for us, so they loaded all our luggage up into a trailer hooked to the back of the van, and drove us all the way to Jackie's house. Then we had finally, officially arrived!

The first couple of days we were very tired, so we didn't do much but go to bed really early and then venture out a bit, but not too much. We went grocery shopping and exchanged some money, but other than that didn't do too much until probably day three, when we started to really check things out. We went downtown and saw Ashley's campus, and got phones so we could start calling real estate agents and be reachable to friends and family. We had to wait for the weekend as well as Monday, which was a statutory holiday, to pass, but then we got a bank account today, so we are now officially account holders at Kiwibank!

Today we also met with a couple of real estate agents who had listings we were interested in. One was right downtown, literally about a five-minute walk from Ashley's school, which would have been great, but it was incredibly tiny, so we gave it a pass. The other was outside the downtown core but still reasonably close, and it was a nice apartment, much bigger than the downtown one and with a very nice layout, but the building was basically in shambles. They were not only renovating the carpark downstairs, but also one whole face of the building. Inside we saw giant holes in some hallway ceilings, and a neighbour of the unit we were looking at had posted a list on their door of all the things that were broken- and it was long. Add to that the fact that the rent was over our price-range, we obviously gave it a pass. There are several more we want to look at, and we're hoping to set up appointments this week to see them all, some near my campus and some near Ashley's, so that'll be good. It's great that we have a place to stay right now, but it's close quarters and we're finding that a bit difficult. We also feel like we want to secure a place sooner rather than later, because that will make us feel more settled, give us our own home base, and allow us to feel safe to venture outside of Auckland and see some more of this beautiful country. We also learned upon arrival that, though we escaped the Olympics in Vancouver, the World Cup is going to be played here very soon, so we've received some recommendations from people that we find a place before the rents sky-rocket because of that. So overall, we'd like to find a place by the end of this week, or next week at the latest. That would definitely be ideal.

Tomorrow Brian and Pat, my aunt and uncle for those of you who don't know, will be coming down to meet us, as they're currently staying about two hours' drive from here, so that will be nice to catch up with them and hear about their adventures in New Zealand so far. I haven't been able to get ahold of my friend Rachel yet, who decided out of the blue to move here in November, but her facebook tells me she's gallivanting around the countryside, so I'm sure we'll hook up at some point. Me and Ashley are both itching to go out and see everything and do all the touristy things, and we feel a sense of urgency about it at times and have to remind ourselves that this isn't a vacation where we have a limited time to do stuff, but that we'll be here for three years and can take our time! But we still want to do some fun stuff before school takes off and we get too busy to explore much. We are also finding bus fare is a big expense, particularly because there aren't transfers here like there are in Vancouver, so you have to pay for every ride you take. We are going to get monthly bus passes at a discounted rate, but we have to have our student IDs first, so we're planning to go and pick those up sometime in the next couple of days.

I should add a paragraph about all the interesting things that are different. Of course the big one is driving cars on the other side of the road than we're used to- we're both a bit intimidated at this point about driving here. It's amazing how ingrained our habits are, so that in the first bit of being here we were constantly stepping out in traffic, thinking the coast was clear but having looked the wrong way! We are getting used to it, slowly, but it'll take some time. Otherwise the driving rules seem to be fairly similar to home, just backwards, with a few differences. It'll be a bit harrowing when we first start driving here, but we'll get used to it. As I already mentioned, the flora and fauna are quite different here- obviously there are some crossovers, like roses and seagulls, but many plants and animals are different. The money looks surprisingly similar to Canada, particularly the twenty, which has the same picture of the queen and is green. But the bills are a bit different too- they're made of plastic and have little holes in them, and the colours are a bit funnier. They only have five coins- a two-dollar, which looks VERY similar to the loonie and threw us off for the first day or two, a one-dollar, which is like a mini loonie, a fifty-cent piece, which is silver and pretty, a twenty-cent piece, also silver, and a copper ten-cent piece. Anything that totals up to a number where a nickel and/or penny would be required is rounded up or down. It's actually pretty nice. They also spell some things differently, like "tyres" instead of "tires," and many things are difficult to pronounce. For example, I mentioned to Jackie that my aunt and uncle were in Whangarei, which I said like "Wang-gar-ay," and she corrected me that it was pronounced "Fung-a-way." Weird! The phone numbers are also different- they’re written ### ### ###, whereas we’re used to ###-####. Also, if you have a pay-as-you-go phone, you often have an extra digit in your number! Also, in New Zealand cell phones  don't get charged for incoming calls ever, no matter where the call comes from or how long you talk for, so that's great new for me, since when I'm on-call for school I will be receiving lots of calls, and won't have to pay for any of them or use up any of my minutes! It also means that if someone calls me or Ash from Canada or the USA, we don't pay anything to receive the call, even though it's technically long-distance. So beef up your long-distance plans and give us a call!

Well, I think that pretty much brings everybody up to date with our adventures so far. We are having a blast and miss everyone we love, but we're not homesick because we have each other, which is nice.