Whew! What a whirlwind week it's been. I finally have a moment and thought I'd catch everyone up on the happenings of the last week.

We left Seattle on Tuesday afternoon, arrived in LAX at 8:00pm and left for New Zealand at 11:45pm. The flight went really smoothly. We had Mahi Mahi for supper and then watched a few movies and crashed out. We woke up about 3 hours out, had some breakfast and than watched another movie and we landed. For being a 13 hour flight it really flew by.

We landed in Auckland in the middle of a storm. It was pouring down rain, blowing 60 knots plus. Apparently they have been in this storm for the last week.

Our first order of business was to rent a car. All of the national chains like Budget, Hertz etc. are super expensive down here so we went with a local company called Jucy. We rented a RAV4... our 2 kitebags, 2 large duffels and 2 carryons barley fit inside the tiny car.. but we made it work. Having no idea where to go we just headed north to get out of the immediate city.

We found ourself on the north shore in a regional park called Shakespear Bay. It is just south of Orewa and north of Albany and Brown's Bay. We spent the next 3 days cross crossing this entire area.We have yet to find a complete map- one that actually has all the roads listed on it so driving around has proven to be a challenge in itself. Especially since all the streets are super tiny (very european like) and the street signs are less than helpful. It took up 2 hours to find a shopping center that we had been at the day before. Come to find out we had only missed it by 2 streets... but we had no idea.

So night one we spent out at Shakespear. The rain stopped just long enough for us to set up our tent... thank you Lord. We both fell into bed completly exhausted from all the travel and emotion from arriving in a new country.

The next morning we woke up to a symphony of birds... ones we had never heard before. One sounded like a pig snorting, the other like a rooster that losts it's crow in the middle of his song and yet another that sounded like it had the hiccups. There were pecocks wondering all over the entire park.. which i might add and crowed all night long. But we survived night 1. :)

The next morning we decided the first order of business was to get a phone so we could have some way to contact people and for people to contact us. We also had to open a bank account so we headed to the nearest shopping center.. yet another several hour adventure. These shopping centers are not listed on any street signs or maps. We finally found one, and also a bank. The people at this bank BNZ were so helpful. They gave a tip on a good place to get a phone, and also let us use their wifi and phone to contact the people we knew in NZ. We must have spent at least 3 hours in the bank. What a blessing. After opening a bank account, and getting a phone we charged off to find a place to take a shower and get somthing to eat.

After looking for a swimming pool for hours and wondering.. does this country have recreation centers? we finally asked someone where a pool was... she was super friendly and replied.. I don't know of any swimming pools, but we do have leisure centers. Come to find out these lesiure centers are everywhere and are full on fitness centers with a pool, racquest ball and squash courts and gym classes etc. Another lesson... just because Kiwi's speak english doesn't mean they have the same words. Ha ha! We have found this to be the case in many instances. :) After a quick shower we headed back to the park for the night. However, the park closed at 7:00pm.. it was now 8:30pm... who knew... and thus we were locked out. So we piled the gear outside our car, wraped it in a tarp.. it was now raining again.. and we rolled out our sleeping bag in the tiny RAV4 and went to sleep. Ok.. so we didn't actually get much sleep that night.. but at least we were dry and out of the wind. It blew so hard we thought it was going to push the car down the street!

We got up early the next day being Sat. and headed for the leasuire center for a shower and then set off to find the shopping center we had been at the day before to finish setting up our bank account and to start looking for a car to buy.

It took us several hours to find our way back to the shoppping center.. but we finally found it, exchanged some money and then headed off to find a car. By this point both of us were getting really sick of the city and all the driving. But we had to find a car before we could head anywhere.

We checked into a place called Turner's Auction. Apparently this is a very common place to buy a used car. Many of them are imports from Japan and others are from people who live in NZ. We didn't see any vans there and we knew we needed more room that a wagon. Plus Nick and I both felt nervous about an auction setting. Another used market down here is called Trademe. This is much like our Ebay/craigslist. Now having a phone and also an address ( we used a friend's who lives here) we were able to create an account and call several people about their cars. God provided again and lead us to a Honday Odyssey that was in our price range. It is in great shape, low miles, has had all the necessary maintenance over the years and a recent WOF. A WOF is a test that a vechical must go through every 6 months. A mechanic goes through the car from top to bottom and anything that looks like a potential problem must be replaced before the car will pass the WOF. They are sto strict on this that even a crack in a windshied or a nick in a tire can fail a car's WOF. It's actually a nice safe guard. IF you don't have a current WOF.. you can'tget gas or a registration. The registration must be displayed in the window... so it's not somthing you can hide. :)

So end of day 3, we now had a phone, a bank account and a car. WHO HOOO! Now we can get out of the city. We called our friends Dave and Sue Kay who invited us to stay with them in Ruakaka. So we headed North last night... arriving late and here we are.

Both of us have mixed emotions about being here at the momment. Somtimes we are super excited and other times it's shear panic and oh my gosh what are we doing here.. but each day we get a little more setteld and organized.. not sure what lies around the next corner but we are taking each day 1 day at at time. Dave and Sue have been great showing us around the area and getting us Kiteboarding contacts all over the country. We are pretty excited to start doing some kiting and also some teaching. To day they are testing their brand new cable park for the first time. Should be fun. We will also be setting up our van and building systems for storage etc. The sun is finally shinning and the day is warming up... what a relief. And on that note I'm going to sign off for the moment. Hopefully we will continue to get more settled and have more frequnt access to internet so our updates will be shorter and more frequent.

Until next time!