Forgot the link to the photos...

These are pictures of our place, as well as the views of Wellington and the harbor from the botanical gardens that are a 3 minute walk from our apartment.

Link

I’m sorry Madison, I’m in love with a new city and her name is...

Wellington!

We still don’t have internet outside of internet cafes downtown, so my posts and communications are going to be a little light until we get that figured out. To start where we left off – the villa-louis comment was uncalled for. Upon venturing outside of our hotel room, I found a plaque that said the Shepherd’s Arms Hotel and Tavern is one of the oldest in Wellington. It first opened in 1880 as a tavern where the shepherds would come to relax at night. At that time it was on the far edge of town, but the city has expanded so much it’s now in the middle of the greater Wellington area – far away from any shepherds. None of that is super important on our “learning to be a kiwi” topic, but its good history and what not.

Friday morning we ventured off into town and found a nice internet cafe. Awaiting us were email responses to inquiries about flats and apartments around town that we were going to look at. We looked at over a dozen or so places online and emailed or called them to see if they were open to couples. Apparently there are a lot of landlords in Wellington (maybe in New Zealand overall) so work into their leases that none of the rooms can be rented to men. What the fuck?! Well that shot down half of the options, so we walked around town and looked at 4 places in person. None of them were super nice, but they were liveable.

Wellington is a city that’s in a valley on a bay. All of the suburbs are on the hills, and each suburb is a separate hill. Now I’m not talking little Wisconsin hills, these are like building suburbs in the Himalayas. When I say “we walked around town” I mean we hiked up and down Mt. Everest. It was hell. We went back to the hotel debating between two places – one flat in Hataitai (a short bus ride out of the main city) that was a single bedroom, shared kitchen / living / bath, and one in Kelburn that was a room in an apartment with 3 girls.

Saturday’s newspaper contains all the classifieds for the week. When we woke up it was not at our door so we waited. After an hour or so I got impatient, walked downstairs to the front desk, and stole a copy out of the bag sitting on a bench. We circled several places and began calling them. I wanted to start with the ones in the suburb next to our hotel, assuming that would be the easiest. Turns out it was not. The climb up makes Mt. Everest look like a bunny hill. The first place on the hill was a dump, so we continued on. Wellington is known for being windy. It’s like nature’s wind tunnel. The winds just whip through the gap between the north and south island and take babies out of their mother’s hands. So the hike further up to second place was damn windy, and I’m surprised we made it. It’s also cold. I think it was 12 degrees Celsius that morning – you do the math, and then factor in hurricane strength winds. The second place was even worse, BUT it was owned by a management company. So we talked to the lady, and had her show us a place downtown so we got a free ride down the mountain. We were kinda curious about the place downtown, but mainly wanted the free ride. It worked out great.

Once downtown I was ready to give up and pick one of the two favourites from last night. Amy wanted to keep going, so we agreed to rent a car. An hour or so later we had a car and were driving up another mountain. When we got to the place we both walked in and fell in love. It was a furnished studio apartment in Kelburn, with a new modern kitchen / living area, and modern bedroom area. The apartment is actually the basement of someone’s house. They weren’t using it so they fixed it all up and started renting it out. At first they landlords wanted to wait until Sunday to give it to us as they had promised to show it to another couple the next day, but as they talked to us and I worked my Zach-Magic (copyrighted / trademarked / restricted / classified) they decided “Well, if you guys want it it’s yours.” We said yes. I’ll link to some pictures of it at the bottom of this post if anyone is interested.

Sunday morning we checked out of the hotel and drove up the mountain to our new home. The place is right next to the Wellington botanical gardens, which I’ll end up walking through to get to work if I work downtown. We went to the grocery store and bought some stuff, and then just relaxed for the evening. We did go on a quick jaunt through the gardens, and let me tell you – they are B-E-A-Utiful! Class-A job Wellington, you did well.

Today we’re going to head into town and go to an internet cafe to apply for some jobs online. We don’t have internet yet in the apartment – that’s also on our list of things to do.

I wish you all were here with us – I miss all my friends and family. I hope everything is going well in the greater Madison area, Kailua, Apple Valley, the greater Phucket area, Idaho, Arizona, Texas, Washington state, Bahrain, Belleville (it’s pretty far away – admit it J), and anywhere else not in the quad-hemisphere area.

-Zach

Auckland Days 2 and 3

Orientation at the International Exchange Program was interesting. It was like we were back in high school at a combined meeting of the Spanish club and German club. It even had that “I’m obsessed with another language” smell to it. The orientation went by slowly. It took almost 3 hours for them to go over some basic New Zealand culture and words / phrases, followed by a brief walkthrough of the entire country, and then 10 minutes of how to set up your bank account and how to apply for your Inland Revenue Department Number (SSN). They could have spent more time on the latter, but alas we were able to figure most of it out. We then picked up our new cell phones (yay!) and walked to the bank and the auto association (where you apply for your IRD#). Since we had all of that taken care of we had to decide on how and when to go to Wellington. Our hotel stay was over the next day unless we wanted to extend it, so we decided to book a few tickets to Wellington and leave the next day (Thursday).

I woke up Thursday morning to see that the hostel reservation I had made the night before was cancelled. Apparently nobody in Wellington has space. It took almost an hour to find another hotel that had any availability for 3 consecutive days. We checked out of our hotel around 1pm and had them hold our bags while we continued exploring the CBD area. We got bored after 2 hours and decided to just go to the airport super early and chilax there. Upon arrival at the airport we ran into the biggest freakin weight-nazi EVER. The guy checking our bags weighed each one and when one (big red) was over 25 kg he made me take some stuff out of it. I put the stuff in my backpack, and then he goes “now that one’s too heavy” and made me weigh my carryon! WTF bro?!? Sure enough, my carryon was over 7 kg, so then I had to take stuff out of it and mix it across all of our bags until everything was under 25 / 7 kg. It was a pain in the ass. We didn’t trash anything, or lose any weight overall, so I’m not 100% sure what his deal was. Whatever. We arrived in Wellington and got checked into our Hotel. The hotel is very interesting – it’s older and has a very colonial feel to it. It’s kinda like staying in a slightly more modern villa-louis. If you don’t know what that is you’re much better off.

Today we have no internet (that I know of). I’m hoping we can find some nearby at a cafe or something, but I’m sure we will. We’ve got at least one flat to look at tonight, so at some point we’ll have to find some internet access to get the address and phone number for that.

Hope all is well in the world,

Zach

The IceBar and Pictures

I totally forgot to mention the ice bar we went to last night.  While I was reading some of these handy Auckland touristy guides, I found a bar made completely of ice.  The room was ice, the couches were ice, even the glasses you drank out of were ice!  It was really freaking cool!  And cold.  You had to wear gloves and a huge parka to go into the bar and they kicked you out after 25 minutes because of the cold.  It was nice, a good experience.  Sadly no photos were allowed in the bar, but they would take you picture with their camera and sell it to you for a gazillion dollars.  We had them take some photos but the camera wasn't working right the whole time and none of them turned out.  Oh well.

Here's some photos of Auckland.  I'll try get more with Amy and me both in them.

CLICKY FOR PHOTOS

The First Full Day in a FFC

We did it!  We survived a full day of living amongst Kiwis.  I don’t think we’re any closer to being a kiwi, but I definitely have a new perspective on things.

The kiwis are quite possibly the most polite, friendly, and helpful people I’ve ever met.  When we got to our hotel on Tuesday just about every person in the lobby offered to help us as we were obviously carrying a lot of shit (3 suitcases, 2 backpacks, a briefcase, and a purse).  It wasn’t the standard “Welcome to our hotel, I’m here to be forced to serve you” it was more of a “Gooday Mate, Could I help you with that?  No, are you sure?  Well if you’d like some help just let me know.  Cherrieo!”  I’m not doing their kindness justice right now; you really can’t describe it in words.  Another example was yesterday Amy and I went down to the front desk to inquire about a few things, and on our way to the elevator there was a man about 25 feet ahead of us who just got on to an elevator.  The elevator had plenty of time to close its doors and start heading up to the floor of its choice, and the man (a kiwi) held the door open button, said “Hello” and asked us which floor we were headed to and pushed the button.  When he got off the elevator he told us to have a wonderful evening.  Would that happen in the USA?  Maybe.  But in kiwiland this sort of thing runs in the blood.  Everyone everywhere has been friendly.  It’s like nothing I have ever seen before.  I don’t think anyone could have a bad day here, because if they left their house and walked down the street they would be cheered up instantaneously.

We walked around a lot yesterday, exploring the city and getting our bearings on the Auckland Central Business District (CBD).  It’s not too different from any other downtown areas in larger cities, except of course for the Sky City tower – the largest freestanding building in the southern hemisphere.  For some reason I’m mildly obsessed with this structure, and have been taking a lot of pictures of it.  It looks cool – very cool.

When I looked online before coming here, I was planning on spending a fortune on a cell phone / minutes.  The pre-pay plans are minimum $.89 cents per minute (~.80 cents US).  Amy and I went to a vodaphone store yesterday afternoon and talked to a saleslady, who hooked us up with a 12-month contract plan for $39.99 / month where we get 200 minutes to other vodaphone phones, 2000 texts, 20 min to any NZ number, and unlimited calling / texting to our “bestmate” (similar to fav-five but a fav-one).  On top of that we each got $90 off a phone.  I don’t know why anyone would do the pre-pay plan – it’s literally 100 times as expensive!  Obviously it didn’t take long for Amy and me to realize that not doing this was stupid, so we filled out some forms and walked out of the store.  We get to pick up our new phones today – Yay!  If anyone wants my number let me know.  I get free incoming calls.

Today we have to go to an orientation at the International Exchange Program headquarters here in Auckland.  This is where we find out how to sign up for a bank account and get the New Zealand equivalent of a SSN.  I’m sure there’s other stuff they tell you too, such as don’t take candy from a stranger and other things like that.

Hope all is quiet on the eastern front and the northern hemisphere,

Zach

P.S. – FFC stands for “Fuckin’ Foreign Country”.  It’s a saying my father coined when we moved to Hawaii.  So far it’s only been used to describe how much more awesome New Zealand is than the US.

New Zealand at last!

9 hours on a flight can be a damn long time – especially when someone (we’ll call him “Andy”) tells you that you’re going to get your own personal video thing to watch your choice of movies, and that doesn’t happen.  Thanks.  Apparently the plane we were on is on the list to be retrofitted with the personal video things, so the entire flight we had an advertisement on the back of the seat in front of us saying “Watch whatever you want – personal video player coming soon!”  It would have been nice if they took those off so it wasn’t mocking us for 9 hours straight.

We arrived in Auckland, got thru customs, and then took an express airport bus shuttle downtown.  It dropped us off in front of where we were supposed to stay (a cheap hostel), so we then had to walk .5 km to our hotel.  Turns about three blocks of that were straight uphill, and I was pulling two suitcases.  My hands hurt pretty bad from pulling the 100+ lbs of weight, and when we got to the hotel I couldn’t really sign my name on the bill.

We relaxed, checked the internet, made a few calls telling people we were alive, and then set out to get some dinner.  We walked about two blocks away and found a nice little place that had falafel and kebabs and burgers, and each had a rice dinner plate with salad / yoghurt, and beef / falafel.  It was delicious.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel, turned on the TV and fell asleep.  I was out by 8:30, I have no clue how late Amy was up.

Let me tell ya – it is beautiful here!  The flight in was gorgeous, and I can’t wait to start exploring.  It’s a bit chilly here at night.  Amy and I both had to wear our jackets on our walk to dinner – I guess we were spoiled by the nice Hawaiian heat.

Today we don’t have anything planned yet.  I want to check out downtown a bit, and try and get a cell phone and some other stuff taken care of.  We’ve only got a few days in Auckland and a lot to do.

So far so good – our New Zealand adventure has only hit the tip of the iceberg though.  I’ll try and update the blog more often now that we’re here, I know I haven’t been doing the best jobs thus far.  Hope all is well around the world!

Three weeks and two days in Hawaii

Amy and I spent a good deal of time in Hawaii before coming out to New Zealand.  I wish I had blogged or written about it while I was there, but it’s better late than never.

It was great to see my parents again – I miss them a lot when I’m away.  The last time I saw them was Christmas, so it had been a good 8-9 months without seeing them.  Courtney had seen them when they were in Montreal, but I didn’t have the vacation time so I didn’t get to go.  I didn’t do the math, but I believe that the 8-9 months was the longest period of time I’ve ever been away from my parents.  My dad had finished remodelling their kitchen right before we arrived and let me tell you it looks GREAT.  It took them 6 or 8 weeks to do it completely because in Hawaii nothing is done the same twice.  Apparently they had a lot of issues with things not being done to code and what not that made it a huge challenge to complete.  The kitchen needed remodelling too – it was falling apart and some of the cabinets were not even usable before.  It’s a small kitchen (everything in Hawaii is small), so having parts of the space being unusable wasn’t practical.  When I got there my dad enlisted my help in replacing the screen door.  The condo association had passed something a year or so ago saying that all the screen doors had to be replaced with security doors (all metal screen doors).  Since we don’t have a truck and renting one on less than a week or so notice is impossible the plan was to drive to Hawaii Hardware (~1 mile away), buy a door, and walk home with it.  Yuck.  Well we ended up driving home with the door about ¾ of the way out of the car.  Of course I was forced to sit in back with the door holding on for dear life.  The install of the door took us about 3-4 hours.  We ran into a few snags along the way with the trim and removing the old door, but in the end we got it done and it looks pretty darn good.

My dad, Amy and I visited the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC) to learn about the various peoples of Polynesia.  The PCC has seven different “islands” that you get to visit to learn about a specific culture – Hawaii, Samoa, Aotearoa, Fiji, ETC ETC.  The one I really wanted to see was Aotearoa, as that’s the Maori word for what we call “New Zealand”.  According to the pamphlet we got, the PCC is considered one of the best cultural theme parks in the world.  We learned a lot about the various cultures from the islands, and contributed towards the employees getting an education.  The way the PCC works is they employ students from the neighboring university (they’re both owned / managed by the same church) and their work goes towards their tuition.  It also allows them to share their culture with people who don’t know much about it – which is worth something on its own.

We did a few hikes with the family during the time in Hawaii, which is always one of my favourite things about visiting.  The last hike we did was hiking above two valleys.  According to the book we were using as a guide (horrible guide!), the hike was 5 miles round trip.  We’re pretty sure it was more like 8 or 9.  When we started getting high up in the mountains (2 hours in) it started pouring.  It was cold, hard rain, and it was EVERYWHERE.  We ended up putting our cell phones in a beef-jerky bag so they wouldn’t get wet, which was a good idea because when we made it back to the bottom there wasn’t a single spot of dryness on any of us.

We only went to the beach three times, and one of those was just a walk around the neighbourhood.  The second time we were at the beach was the day before we left.  Apparently 9 days after a full-moon the jellyfish hit the shores of Hawaii.  Well, the day we were there was day 7 post-full-moon, and there were 50 or so jellyfish on the beach – mostly dead.  There weren’t very big – no bigger than an inch or two around, but the stingers were pretty long (2-3 feet).

Courtney arrived a few days before we left.  She was in Hawaii for two reasons – to say goodbye to Amy and me, and to search for a spot for her wedding.  She had a lot of trouble getting out to Hawaii, as her plane in Denver was delayed and then she missed the connecting flight in Los Angeles.  In the end she made it though, which was good.

The other thing we did worthy of mentioning was go to the Bodies Exhibit.  The Bodies Exhibit is where they have a bunch of human bodies that have been dried out and then filled with silicon or something so they look alive, so you can see how all the bones and muscles and such work together.  It created a huge stir because the bodies are all from the Chinese penal system and people were concerned about some of them being torture victims or executed prisoners.  It was very cool to see, and I would recommend it to others when it reaches a city near you (if it does).

We left Hawaii yesterday, and I had to say good-bye to my parents and sister once again.  I love and miss them all a lot, and wish that we had more time together.  I also miss all of my friends from Madison.  Amy and I found a nice bar in Kailua that you all would have loved.

This time difference may be the death of me.

Here I am, sitting at home alone at 6:30 PM Hawaii time (4:30 pm New Zealand time, 11:30 PM Madison time), and I have no one to call and tell my big news. Less than 15 minutes ago I got an email back from a recruiter who I've been corresponding with in New Zealand, who said "I am working on something that you would be ideal for." Yup. I may have a job lined up or at least partially in the works before I even get to New Zealand.... and I have NO ONE to tell. The only person I felt safe calling was Andy, because being jobless there was no reason he would still be awake. Surprisingly he was sober when he answered, but his phone died. Twice. It was redonkeyuless.

Anyways, I tend to get excited over things that end up being nothing, but in case this becomes something big - WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO! I'm high as a kite right now... if only someone were here to partake in celebratory drinking with me.

Get a freakin job you bum!

Yeah yeah, so I haven't updated the blog in awhile.  Gimme a break, will ya!

This week marks the halfway point of our vacation, and the "Oh, shit!" point for me to get in gear!  Yesterday I called a recruiter in New Zealand, and sent her my resume (CV) and cover letter today.  I'm hoping *crosses fingers* that I'll get a response from her soon, I'll even take a "Thanks for your CV, I'll let you know closer to when you're in town if I find anything."

There's still a lot to do before we go to New Zealand - here's a small list of what we have to get done:

-Book hotel in Auckland

-Find transportation from Auckland to Wellington

-Figure out when to leave Auckland for Wellington

-Find a place to live in Wellington

-Find a job!  Seriously, find a job Zach!

There's more to do, but that's what I came up with in 20 seconds, without causing myself to freak out.

I'll post more when I know more about our New Zealand adventures.