Since I ended up switching flights, I got one extra day in Auckland, so after my refreshing 8 hours of sleep on the plane, day 1 was rather successful. I wandered around the city for a bit. I found my church for sunday and found a public library where I can get free internet that doesn't kick me off like McDonalds. Its not too hard to get good bearings in the city because instead of mountains like Salt Lake, they have the sky tower that you can see from everywhere and my hostel is just a couple blocks from the tower, so between that and the harbor finding my way around hasn't been to difficult. There is TONS of shopping in Auckland. I guess you could say it is like the New York City of New Zealand...except with only 1.4 million people, most of which are asian by the way. English is the official language but I don't think most people know that, ha ha but its fine, its just a super diverse place.
For lunch I was inspired by the Flight of the Conchords song that mentions getting a Kabab on the street, so I got a lamb kabab from a shop on the street. I am staying in the Nomads international hostel. It is really nice and clean. The bathrooms are big with lots of showers and toliets and are clean. I am in a 8 bedroom female room but there are only 3 girls in it total and the other 2 are super nice. One, Anna, is from Finland (the girl I met on the bus) and the other Onya is from Germany. I never say their names cuz they are basically the same ha ha ha. But Onya has been traveling around alone for 2 years! She does little jobs here and there but then just travels. I was trying to talk her into going sky diving last night ha ha. But my room is on the 4th floor and I stole the pillows from another bed so now I am extra comfy. We have a window that looks out on a building ha ha. There are 7 levels and the elevator is super slow. The kitchen is at the top and the travel desk and people you can ask questions are at the bottom so I have done alot of stairs lately. And there are 10 ft ceilings so each flight of stairs is really like one and a half flights. But all the people I have met so far are nice. The hostel is pretty empty though, maybe on like 30 people in a building that can hold a few hundred. I did a bunch of fun stuff yesterday. I finally found a mini grocery store....in the mall. So I bought bread and jam, that was the only real food I could find. Then I went to Mt. Eden, the highest point in Auckland and it was INCREDIBLE!!! The view was fantastic! it is a volcano so its really tall, then there is a big creator! But you can see the entire country from that point I swear! It was super easy to get to, I just jumped on a city bus going that way and some lady told me where to get off then like a 10 minute hike and I was basically on top of the world! It was a litttle cloudy and rained a bunch yesterday but stopped just in time for me to go do that. Then I walked down to the harbor and around the city some more. Its a lot of fun to explore. For dinner I went to the bar/restaurant in the hostel with Anna because they had a pizza special. I had a barbque chicken pizza and I've got to say the kiwis cook a pretty good pizza. But Anna and I talked for a couple hours comparing Finland, America, and New Zealand. Afterwards I was going to go out and walk around some more but decided my bed sounded better after a long day of traveling. Hopefully I can post some nice pics of the city.
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