Hello from Kiwi Land!!

Well I arrived last Monday and can't believe I have already been here a week!!

I arrived after a short flight but didn't get much sleep so was pretty shattered!! Luckily Tony offered to come and pick me up (for those of you that don't know, I have some family friends who I've never met out here!). After a nice shower and lunch at Tony and Elizabeth's house, which was well needed, I met Sue (Tony's sister) who took me over to her house! There I had a relaxing afternoon/evening and Peter showed me a video of some of the history of New Zealand!! Safe to say, I slept amazingly that night!!

On Tuesday, Peter took me up to a lookout in the Waiatarua Reserve nearby! It had some amazing views of the city and the harbour bridge and across the water to some other parts of Auckland! We then went onto a little house nearby which had an even better view!! Apparently the house was brought by a lady years ago because she loved the view so much and when she died she left it to the city for other people to enjoy the view as well! You can hire it out for garden parties now!
In the afternoon, I headed over to my hostel to have a look around and get my bearings a bit! Its a lovely hostel, quite small with probably only about 40 beds altogether! There's a lovely kitchen with an oven and grill (so more cheese on toast is on the cards!!) and a 'family room' with a huge TV!! I was in one of the dorm rooms for a couple of days until there was space in the cleaners room! After having a look around, I headed back to Tony and Elizabeths for a lovely dinner!! Amazingly, they live literally 10min walk from my hostel!!

Wednesday I started my cleaning duties!! I'm working from 10am-12.30pm which actually goes quite quickly! This morning I was on beds, which is very easy! We either have 3 or 4 of us working on each part, so beds, kitchen or bathrooms!! Funnily enough, everyone hates the bathrooms!! After work, I had a wonder around the village of Mt Eden which is at the end of my road!! It's quite a small village with one main road, but there is a lovely bakery which I think might be hard to ignore!!

Thursday afternoon I headed into the city! Although the village is pretty small its got plenty of frequent buses into the city and they are quite cheap as well!! I headed into the shopping part (obviously) which has the main street called Queen Street! Near the ferry terminal and opposite one of the shopping centres they have a big o2 Rugby World Cup count down, with the days, hours, minutes and seconds!! Unlike the Olympic one, this one was working!! Auckland is a lovely city and there are some amazing office buildings all around!! Shopping is quite expensive here though- certainly haven't found a primark out here anyway!!

I headed back into the city again on Friday, however this time with Elizabeth and we met Sue at the ferry terminal!! We all headed over to Devonport which is still in Auckland but just north of the city across the water! It was only a 15min boat ride but gave some lovely views of the city skyline!! On the way back, we also past loads of sailing boats, and can understand why they call it the city of sails!! Once in Devonport, we wandered through the little town which is very relaxed and had plenty of cafes. We eventually came to the bottom of Mt Victoria, which I had seen from the boat and it looked pretty big!! But we decided to climb it anyway, and with only 2 quick stops for views, we made it to the top!! The views were amazing as we could see the city and also Rangitoto Island! This island, looks almost the same if you stand anywhere around the bottom and look up!! I was a bit disappointed to find that Mt Victoria was only 283ft-apparently in NZ any hill that was formed from an old volcano is called Mt! We still fully deserved the coffee that we had once we were back in the town though!!

Unfortunately the weather let me down on Saturday!! I was planning on climbing Mt Eden which is literally right behind my hostel, however it was tipping it down!! So Saturday afternoon turned into a lazy one spent relaxing around the hostel!! In the evening however the weather cleared up in time for me to head to Eden Park to watch Blues V Warratahs! It's only about a 30min walk to the stadium! The stadium itself is very impressive and I've been told that they have been improving it ready for the world cup!! One side of the building looks very historical, almost like an old town hall front, but the rest is like any other stadium!! The facilities inside were brilliant although I wasn't impressed that they only accept passports as forms of ID for foreigners!! The first time I've been ID'd for drink at a stadium and they don't accept driving licences!! Anyway, it was a brilliant match with a very exciting first half!! I even got given a Blues flag to keep :) The stadium wasn't very full with only 15,000 but they treated the game like a major event with cheerleaders and fire every time a try was scored!!

Sunday morning I found out there is only an 11hr time difference between here and home!! Was quite glad I don't have a camera here for Skype as I was still in my pjs!! Anyway, in the afternoon I went over to Tony and Elizabeths and we drove over to the North Shore of Auckland! We went up the inland way heading all the way up to Orewa!! There were some amazing views again although this time of Great Barrier Island!! On the way back we came through some of the smaller coastal resorts which looked like lovely holiday places!! Some had BBQ areas that you could book out with plenty of grass around and the beach just 50m away!! Elizabeth said they used to spend Easter in one of the places but often had a couple of rainy days!! Reminded me a bit of our old holidays in Croyde!! We came back across the harbour bridge which is not quite as spectacular as Sydney I have to admit!! But it is free which is a bonus!!

Well that's about all for now!! Sure I will have some more updates next week!!

Sending lots of 'Sweet as' love

xxxx