First Day!

Finally here after a long ride. The planes from DC to LAX and LAX itself were terrible and will hopefully never be repeated but the long plane trip turned out to be great as Air New Zealand was unbelievable and I slept a pretty good amount to pass the time. I guess the booking company we were supposed to use placed everyone on our program in the same row so we sat 9 across in the plane with the remaining three people close by. It was nice to have the opportunity to meet some of my program mates prior to arrival and even nicer to have the window seat. So far everyone seems pretty great.

So I spent my first overwhelming day in New Zealand. It's unbelivably beautiful here but then I'm sure many of you had a sneaking suspicion of this prior to my departure. It was dark and cloudy when we landed but soon after the sun came up it got really sunny and relatively hot...very hot in OH terms. We walked around the city a great deal and then up some huge volcanic cones (no longer active) which dot the city. Auckland was mostly made up by lava flow to begin with. Some places the rocks were so cool because you could tell that they had just been formed by lava flowing out. It sort of looked like it still was flowing just kind of frozen in a picture. I'll post photos when I get the chance to have internet on my computer. Well so then after all this walking we went swimming in the pacific ocean in our togs (swimsuit here) and then visited this underwater world where we saw sharks, penguins, and other exciting sea creatures. After this we had about a half hour at the hotel during which we could shower but not lay down and then off to dinner. I'm now sitting in an internet cafe posting instead of going with some others to get ice-cream...pretty big leap for me as far as I'm concerned.

My cool NZ fact of this post is that there are many intersections here where you can cross diagonally. Yes, all of a sudden the green walk signals turn on and people cross in both directions and diagonally. It looks like mayhem in the intersection for about a minute then everyone clears out and traffic continues. The only problem is that this only takes place in some intersections and they're not labeled so you just have to guess? Either way it's pretty hilarious to watch and participate in.

So now we're allowed to go to sleep although it is only 7pm here and the sun is still quiet high in the sky. I will be heading back to the hotel in a few minutes to pack my bag for tomorrow and hit a very welcoming pillow. Pictures to come so check soon!