What a Whirlwind

It is currently halfway through day 3 for me.  So much has happened that it seems like it should be much longer.

The plane ride was pretty rough, and by rough I mean turbulent, and by turbulent I mean the whole rest of the day while I was walking around I felt like I had just stepped off a boat.  That bad.  It literally felt like the ground was moving beneath me.  Thankfully, that has now gone away and I can walk normally.

The plane landed at 6:40am, about 40 minutes ahead of schedule.  I had a nice bus ride to the hostel and got settled in quickly.  I only had to wait about 20 minutes for my room to be ready!  I quickly showered and packed my bag for everything I would need to get done that day.  I accomplished a lot that morning and by lunchtime I had activated my bank account, bought a sim card for my phone, and put in my request for an IRD number (an IRD number is like a tax ID number that will enable me to work in NZ).

I spent the rest of the time walking up and down Queen Street, which is the main street in Auckland.  Unfortunately, I left my camera at the hostel, so I’ll have to go back later and take some pictures.  The next day I bought some groceries for myself from an Asian food market which surprisingly had a good selection of produce, meat, and canned goods for reasonable prices.  I took a walk over to the University area and found a wonderful park to sit and eat my lunch.

 

The park is called Auckland Domain.  It’s hard to see from this picture but the flat land extends far to the left and right and is covered in what I can only guess are Cricket Pitches.  I have no idea if that is the correct term for those long green patches, but I saw a group of school children playing Cricket on  one of them far in the distance.

I then walked around the large hill in the distance and found the Wintergarden.  I had read about it in my guidebook, but I wasn’t that thrilled about visiting it.  I am really glad I stumbled upon it.  Two green houses connected by a central fountain and a Fern Area.  Yeah, an outside area dedicated to ferns.  It was awesome.

 

This is inside the Fern Area.

 

This is inside one of the green houses.

Over the past two and half days, I’ve kept looking out for help wanted signs while walking around.  I found one across the street from where I’m staying and I took my resume in, but I haven’t heard anything back from them yet.  Other than that I’ve applied online to a few places.  One of which is a golf course, that just emailed me back a few minutes ago and set up an interview with me for next Tuesday!  I’m so excited, I would love working in the club house of a golf course.  I will be kinda pissed if I do get I though, because I left my golf clubs at home. Oh well.

I’ve met some cool people already, and with the nice patio outside it will be really easy to meet more.