Day One: Our First Full Day in New Zealand

Well, when we woke up this am in our surprisingly comfortable YHA Youth Hostel Auckland City bed, it finally hit us that we have actually moved to New Zealand. First, I must apologize to everyone whom we promised to contact as soon as we reached New Zealand. We are unable to set up our Vonage phone yet, as we only have access to wireless internet right now (and it only works with cable internet), and time on the internet was greatly hindered by the fact that we had little battery life on our laptops and had not had a chance to purchase power converters yet.
Yesterday was a lot of stumbling around in the pouring rain trying to accomplish things while too jet lagged to think properly (not a terribly productive or pleasant day). We did learn some valuable lessons though, like Auckland, although a big city, does NOT have a 24/7 mentality, and when they say that reception is open 24/7 they mean that if you go there at 3am it will be gated and dark, but if you call, there is a crazy, scary man who may or may not answer the phone and sell you canned spaghetti.



But after a good night's sleep, we are back on track. We are well settled into our hostel, which is quite nice and actually pretty quiet. Here are some pictures for those of you who haven't gotten a chance to check out the hostel's website on your own.































After a bit more hiking today, we now have a wicked awesome surge protector power converter that basically has conversion plugs for any country and only cost us $18 NZD.



We also bought some food, so as not to have to buy expensive canned spaghetti from the front desk in the middle of the night, got NZ cellular phones, visited the U of A campus, and made baby steps in the apartment hunt. It helped that it has been mainly sunny and gorgeous today! ;) Since we accomplished so much today, we are planning on celebrating with dinner out and a couple of Monteith's beers which we have so missed these past two years.

Cheers!

P.S. Here is the chart that I promised some of you!

Calling to and from New Zealand Time Chart


(bolded times are good times to call)

From To
USA-EST (Michigan) New Zealand (*the next day)
12:00 AM 06:00 PM
01:00 AM 07:00 PM
02:00 AM 08:00 PM
03:00 AM 09:00 PM
04:00 AM 10:00 PM
05:00 AM 11:00 PM
06:00 AM 12:00 AM
07:00 AM 01:00 AM
08:00 AM 02:00 AM
09:00 AM 03:00 AM
10:00 AM 04:00 AM
11:00 AM 05:00 AM
12:00 PM 06:00 AM
01:00 PM 07:00 AM
02:00 PM 08:00 AM
03:00 PM 09:00 AM
04:00 PM 10:00 AM
05:00 PM 11:00 AM
06:00 PM 12:00 PM
07:00 PM 01:00 PM
08:00 PM 02:00 PM
09:00 PM 03:00 PM
10:00 PM 04:00 PM
11:00 PM 05:00 PM

New Zealand USA-EST
12:00 AM 06:00 AM
01:00 AM 07:00 AM
02:00 AM 08:00 AM
03:00 AM 09:00 AM
04:00 AM 10:00 AM
05:00 AM 11:00 AM
06:00 AM 12:00 PM
07:00 AM 01:00 PM
08:00 AM 02:00 PM
09:00 AM 03:00 PM
10:00 AM 04:00 PM
11:00 AM 05:00 PM
12:00 PM 06:00 PM
01:00 PM 07:00 PM
02:00 PM 08:00 PM
03:00 PM 09:00 PM
04:00 PM 10:00 PM
05:00 PM 11:00 PM
06:00 PM 12:00 AM
07:00 PM 01:00 AM
08:00 PM 02:00 AM
09:00 PM 03:00 AM
10:00 PM 04:00 AM
11:00 PM 05:00 AM