One Week Later..

Hello again!

This has been quite an eventful week. Ed and I started our job today. Ed's uncle has a friend whose sons opened up a few restaurants in Auckland. We were lucky enough to meet with them and they gave us jobs! Pretty sweet. It's a chain of Mexican-Californian cuisine (Mexicali). Good food!

We are in the process of signing the paperwork for a place to live. It's been really stressful. For 6 days straight, we woke up at 7am, had breakfast, showered, and went out into the city looking for a place to live. We walked over 8 hours every single day. Needless to say, we were exhausted! We had a whole bunch of appointments set up every day, but none of the places worked out. A lot of the apartments in the city are super small! They usually ranged between 30-45 sq meters, so about 350-500 sqft for a 2 bedroom. TINY! The one that we're (hopefully) going to live in is 80 sq meters, which is around 860 sqft. It's in a great location.. 10 minute walk to work, 15 minutes to the Viaduct (where all the fun happens), 10 minutes to Queen St. (main street in Auckland). Basically we'd be within walking distance of everything.

Last night was Tess and Petra's jungle-themed party. It was pretty cool.. lots of animal print everywhere haha. (You can look at pictures on Facebook.) Earlier this week Ed and I also hung out with some of my friends that I went to school with when I studied abroad here. It was nice to see everybody after three years. It really doesn't feel like it's been that long!

So the hostel we're staying in at the moment (Grafton Hall) has a cafeteria. We eat our meals there because it's part of what we pay for. [Just FYI, it's not a hostel hostel.. it's more of a dorm for a university nearby.] Anyway, there's this old olddd man who we see all the time. He's really friendly and will always say hi to us. Today at dinner though, he sat down with us and we started talking.. pleasantries at first, but then we delved into politics, religion, etc. It was such an interesting conversation! It may sound weird, but it was honestly a highlight of my time here so far. His name is David and he's an Englishman who lives in New York. We assume that he's fairly wealthy because he (along with some friends) founded NPD (American demographics company) and sold it after 18 years to Dow Jones for what I'm assuming was a hefty sum. He's an econometrician/statistician.. and both Ed and I majored in economics so it was really nice talking about financial issues in the States. He was a professor for years at different schools like Berkeley and Cornell. And he's also the sweetest old man everrrrrrr! We talked for almost 3 hours! Anyway, I want to adopt him as my grandpa.. seriously.. he's so cute. Maybe I'll get a picture with him before we leave Grafton so I can post it up here. I'll try to get his contact info too without sounding like a creepo. He seems like a pretty good connection to have.

Not sure what this building is, but I thought it looked really pretty!

Pretty church in the city.

Really should've taken a picture of the church because the building was awesome, but instead I took a picture of the moon being out during the day.

I just noticed that there are a lot of reallyyyy pretty churches in Auckland. Lots of amazing architecture. I'll find some more to photograph.

Alright.. I think that's all for today. Goodnight!


P.S. JP, I love you and miss you!!! xoxoxoxo

Aotearoa - Land of the Long White Cloud

This is my first blog ever! ..unless you consider Xanga a blog, haha.

So, I've arrived in New Zealand (or Aotearoa) for my year-long adventure. Ed and I are staying at a hostel (it's actually a dorm for students at the University of Auckland during the school year). We've been trying to find an apartment basically since we got here on Friday, but we haven't had any luck. It's also been raining every single day so that makes it more difficult. We're hoping to find a place by tomorrow because we really want to get settled in already and it's a bit stressful not knowing whether or not we'll find a place to live soon.

We found a cathedral while walking around the city center yesterday. It was so beautifulllll! We popped in for a bit to pray for help finding an apartment, hahaha. I'm sure that's probably not the best thing to be praying for, but we reallyyyyy want to find a place! We actually went back to the church for mass this morning and it was really nice. It was a really good sermon and the priest had a sense of humor so it made the mass really interesting. He talked about how God will shine the light and lead the way. Quite fitting for what happened later.

After church, we had a few appointments with agents to view apartments. All were way overpriced and not what we were looking for. On our way to the last one, Ed and I were exhausted from walking for 6 hours and decided we needed a beer. I spotted an Irish pub on the way, but we continued walking to the building where we had the meeting. I insisted we go back to the pub instead of going to another one up the road towards our hostel... and I'm so glad I did. On our way to it, we noticed that it was right across the street from the cathedral! We met the bartender, who happened to be from Ireland and has been living in Auckland for a few years. He gave us a ton of tips for where to look for places and what to do and it was great! We ended up talking a lot and planned to meet later tonight! We made our first friend!!

After leaving the pub, we were definitely in better moods. ANDDDD.. the sun came out for a bit! It's been super gloomy/rainy since we arrived so it was a nice to get a glimpse of sunlight.

Anyway, we have a few prospects, which is exciting. I realllyyyyyy hope we find a place tomorrow. Wish us luck!

XOXO

Haven't taken many pictures yet, but I had to snag a couple shots with my phone after church. I'll get better ones of the inside later!