Christchurch, New Zealand

Flying domestically in New Zealand is a breeze - and I mean that both literally and figuratively. Now take this however you want, but we didn't have to show our ID's ONCE when flying from Auckland to Christchurch yesterday. If we hadn't had a couple extra bags to check, we might not have had to talk to another human. You check in at a little kiosk, weigh your bags yourself, put the tags on yourself, and load them onto the converyor belt. When you go through security, you don't have to take off your shoes, hat, or belt. They don't even make you take your computer out of your bag. Everything was going nice and smoothly...that is, until our approach to Christchurch. Just as we were chatting with the Kiwi sitting next to us about the beautiful scenery out of our window, the plane suddently dropped and started bouncing around pretty violently. "Oh yes," he said, "there's the winds." Apparently this was a common thing, but that didn't do much to comfort Steph. She spent the rest of the flight in the fetal position and had to sit in the terminal for a good 15-20 minutes to recover afterwards. After she started feeling better, it was my turn to hyperventilate - we were about to rent a car and thus drive on the left for my first time ever. Yikes. It seems very daunting. It had taken us all of our stay in Auckland to even somewhat get the hang of looking the right way when crossing the street. How was I going to do this? Despite how intimidating it seemed, it truly is a lot easier than it looks. We opted for the maximum insurance, which took a little of the pressure off. We cruised through the country just north of Christchurch in our little Nissan Sunny until I got the hang of it. Steph still has to remind me"stay to the left" every now and then, but I think I got the hang of it...

And I better, because we bought a car last night. There is a car auction place here in town that we'd heard was a good place to buy a car, so we went last night "just to check it out." That turned into "just test driving" a few, which eventually turned into buying a 1996 Subaru Legacy for $2400 (about $1500 USD). Turns out, car auctions are a lot of fun - and then you actually buy one and the panic sets in. What the heck were we doing? We don't know, but we think we got a good deal and the car drove pretty good, so we're just going to cross our fingers and hope for the best. We pick her up in about an hour. Until then, Steph has to learn to drive on the left - and neither of us is all to excited about it. Luckily it's not a big city and there's plenty of country roads nearby with light traffic. Wish us luck...

In other news, we now have cell phones. We went for the prepaid phones on the Telecom network - which is basically the AT&T of New Zealand. In fact, we witnessed our first strike while in Auckland - Telecom workers complaining about low pay or something. This was actually right before we were going to go in to get our phones, and for a while Steph refused because "what if the strikers see us in there?" After they had been gone for a while we went and got our phones. My number is 027 818 0970 and Steph's is 027 818 0971. We get incoming calls for free, so if you have Skype or some other way to call us that doesn't cost you much, feel free to give us a call. Just check the time difference - we are 16 hours ahead of eastern time. Also, we have a mailing address:

Adam Brown

#5278

Nomads Fat Camel Travel Desk

38 Fort Street

Auckland City

New Zealand

Basically they collect our mail and forward it to wherever we are. Care packages with candy or Chick-fil-a sandwiches are welcome. Anyways, we have gotta go pick up our new car!

Weeping willow tree in Christchurch park