November Day.

This morning I left Bondi Junction bright and early at 6:30 am. I caught my train to the International Airport. Sydney has fantastic public transport. It only took me about half an hour ot travel all the way from the eastern suburbs on the coast to the airport in the west. Plenty of time to go through customs, immigration, biosecurity, regular security (where I had nothing confiscated, for once), duty free, a million miles of airport, and spend my last ten Aussie dollars on tea and a muffin at Gloria Jeans (Australia's equivalent to Second Cup, I'd say. I used to always think there were just a lot of women's clothing stores around when people would mention it, but I've got it all figured out now, just in time to leave). Once I got through all of that, I boarded my Air NZ flight and headed across the ditch to New Zealand!

On the plane I watched 500 days of Summer. It was okay, but I wouldn't really recommend it. Maybe if you have a long flight and nothing better to do, try it out, but I ended up reading my travel guide for most of the flight (which was only three hours long, anyway). To eat, I was served a mini shepherd's pie with tomato sauce (pseudo-ketchup), a little salad of sweet potato, feta, sundried tomato, and orzo. That was nice. There was also a really tasty apricot cake for dessert. I wanted that lemon pop that they have everywhere (it's called Lift, but I couldn't remember the name) so I requested pop and the stewardess asked me what that was. The landing in Auckland was the worst flying experience I have had so far. It seemed to take so long for them to descend. And it was windy and rough. I distracted myself by looking out the window. As you land, you can see both coasts of NZ because it's so narrow at this part of the country. I thought that was really cool. I also felt so excited to be here because dry, red Australia was sort of making me miss Canada a bit and NZ looks so much like home.

At the Auckland airport I had to go through immigration, duty-free twice (I hate that because they just constantly squirt perfumes and it's so hard to breathe), customs, security, baggage claim, biohazard control (my boots needed to be cleaned properly and I saw a little sniffer beagle carrying a bag of brussel sprouts back to his security officer. That was so cute.), baggage x-ray, and finally out into the airport where my cousin, Jonathan, had been waiting for an hour. He said he'd never seen Auckland International so busy. It was absolutely packed for some reason.

We drove back to his townhouse and I met Liz and Oliver. Oliver is the cutest little thing. He has a sore tummy right now because he has reflux (his was born on September 14, so he can't really deal with these things). But, I rocked him for about an hour and he was so smiley and happy. Such a sweet little guy.

Once he was all ready to go and we had chatted for awhile, we all went out to a nearby village and had thai food. It was great. I was stuffed because Liz and Jonathan had also bought a bunch of Halloween treats, but nobody had come to their door. Trick or Treating isn't really a tradition over here, but it's starting to become more popular so they were hoping to get at least a few kids.

Tomorrow I'm going to hang out with Liz and Oliver and plan the rest of my trip. I'm not tired tonight because of the time difference, so I'm sure I'll sleep in a bit tomorrow. I'll let you know what I've planned once I figure it all out!