Touchdown.

Well it's official. We love New Zealand.

Our airplane. Under Quantas it says "Spirit of Australia."
We did not fly to Australia so we don't know if this claim is true.

After a long (12 hours) day of flying, we landed in Auckland at 4:45 AM on Sunday the 21st, which is quite the adjustment considering we left on Friday night. Because of the time change we ended up skipping most of Saturday, which basically means we lost a day of our lives, but we should get that back on the return flight, so it's all good.

Upon arrival in Auckland, we picked up our baggage and made it through customs pretty quickly and with no problems. We had heard that customs could be kind of a hassle, and they are very strict about any food, water or soil making it into the country, but we passed with flying colors.
After customs we caught a bus into Auckland City Center and missed our stop, so we got to be really obvious tourists and lug our (rather large) roller suitcases up a (rather large) hill. Luckily, it was 6 in the morning so not too many people were around to witness this.

Our very sketchy elevator up to our hostel
(with manual doors that we get to open and close ourselves).

It is Tuesday afternoon here currently, and in the past two days we have been busy exploring the city and getting all of our necessary paperwork together so that we will eventually be able to work. Everywhere we go, people are very very nice, helpful, and laid back. It was kind of surprising to us that we were able to apply for an Inland Revenue Number (the equivalent of a Social Security Number) without any real address or contact information other than our emails!

This is Rachel standing in downtown Seattle- I mean Auckland.

The Sky Tower in the background is a broadcasting facility and is the
largest building in the southern hemisphere. Resembles the space needle.

Auckland Harbour. Auckland is known as "The city of a thousand sails."
We saw at least two.

A view of the Ferry Building on the Pier.

Yeah. We thought the red fence was cool.

4 Million People.
$100,000.
1 Winner.
DRAMATIC.

In New Zealand, when you order a 'small' drink, that is actually what you get.

I got to eat at Wagamama! Very exciting. I got Cha Han (of course).
It's a Japanese food chain that's popular in Europe and NZ.

Rachel has a new-found appreciation for Wagamama.

Now that we have most of our paperwork and prepping done, we are going to take the next few days to check out some of the sights in Auckland. Tomorrow we are going to take a ferry over to Rangitoto Island and hike a volcano. We will try to update again soon! Thanks everybody for your comments, we love to hear from you.