Day One January 12, 2008

After flying all night and getting absolutely no sleep on the plane, we finally arrived in New Zealand at about 6:45 AM on Saturday (which is 10:45 am Friday for you Utah people!). We all trudged off the planes with our carry on and went down the long corridor, and even longer line for customs. Finally it was my turn, I was obviously a little nervous, having never gone through customs before, and I think the lady could tell, she asked me all sorts of questions, I think she just liked to watch me squirm as I tried to come up with the right answer! Finally when she was about to let me through she informed me that there was a problem with my visa, it was coming up as a visitors and not a student. While they tried to fix it I went to get my bags, man people are crazy when they get into hoards! When I finally got my bags they had fixed the visa issues and I went through a final bag check and x-ray. Some people, those carrying tents had to stay behind to get their equipment checked for American soil, the rest of us went out to the big 15 passenger vans and started packing the trailers (By the way I am eternally grateful to my tent-mate Erin for suffering through that!). You would not believe how weird it is for the driver to be on the other side of the car, and the cars to be on the other side of the road! I didn’t drive, because the vans turned out to be manuals and not automatics, so I filmed a lot of the packing and preliminary stuff. After everyone was loaded up we went to a park and played around for a while. I went into a hotel and quickly used the internet to send everyone a message, and then spent a good hour charging my camcorder. After falling asleep on the couch of the hotel, I decided it was probably time to go outside and enjoy the New Zealand air while we waited for our advisor to finish some of his own stuff. I mostly listened to my iPod in the grass, but it was beautiful, and the perfect temperature. I even got a little bit of sun, in January!!!! When our advisor came back he had fish and chips for us to eat for lunch, I have to say, even though there was almost enough grease and tomato paste to cover up the fishy taste, I still wasn’t a fan, although I did eat one whole fish piece, with lemon squirted over it, Dad would have died! When lunch was over we all piled into vans again and left Auckland, we really don’t care too much about the city stuff while we are here. We decided to take the scenic route to Whitanga (pronounced fitianga). It was beautiful driving along the coast with rocky cliffs on our other side. After about three and a half hours in the car, so around 4:30, we finally arrived. The first thing we did was set up our tent in our campsite. I am sleeping with two girls named Julia and Erin, they are awesome. After we got all situated a bunch of us decided to go down to the beach for a while before the sun went down. We had so much fun skin surfing and playing in the waves, and the water was perfect. After the sun went behind the hill half the group went back to the campsite, but the rest of us stayed behind to play ultimate frisbee. I am taking Alex’s advice, I am never going to say that I am too tired to do something, even though I was absolutely exhausted! Ultimate was a blast and my team totally kicked butt! After playing for about an hour and a half it was nearing nine, so we headed back to camp. I took a quick (timed 5 min) shower, and got ready for bed. I had to search through my bags for a while to find my flashlight but I finally did. Now it is bedtime and I talked my roommates into opening the rain flap of our tent so we could see the stars as we fall asleep! Good night! I can honestly say, that even though I have only been here one day, this will without a doubt be one of the best experiences of my life. I love you all.