We're here!

It's true. After a long long night of flying we've finally made it to Wellington!

We got on the shuttle bus that my sister-in-law so graciously provided for us at around 4pm and headed to SFO's international terminal. We then boarded our plane at 8pm PST bound for Auckland. 15 hours later we checked into our "serviced apartments" with the assistance of a very helpful and friendly kiwi named Brett (pronounced "brit") from my new company.

Everyone is in pretty reasonable condition now that we've eaten breakfast and lunch. Joanne and Zoe are on their third tour of the downtown Wellington area while Haley and I take a break.

I'm going to make this quick because I've had maybe a night's rest in the last week and can't really string my words together to make. good. blog. write.

A few observations:

So far, no food items that we've purchased so far including various local and international sodas such as Coca Cola have had any corn syrup in them... high fructose or otherwise. It's all sugar. Sugar in the catsup (tomato sauce,) sugar in the sodas, sugar sugar sugar. Like, you know, the crystalline stuff that comes from cane.

If you're between ages 13 and 23 in Wellington, there's a good chance your T shirt and pants match, and they're both black.

If you order your coffee black, you'll get asked if you want a short black or a long black. This is espresso with hot water... either one shot or two. It's "Cafe Americano" at Starbucks, I believe.

The word "Quay" as in "Lambton Quay," a major downtown thoroughfare is pronounced "key" or "kee." And "Ngaio" is pronounced "NIGH-oh" and "Dunedin" is pronounced "doo-NEE-din" and not "doo-NAY-din" or "DUNE-uh-din."

The Fish and Chips shop down the road is run by a Vietnamese lady named Thuy Vu, and they make Pho as well as fish and chips. The fish and chips rocked. I hope the Pho does too.

A Verizon Motorola RAZR can't call out of the country, but can take incoming calls.

If I put the laptop actually IN the kitchen window in this apartment someone's unsecured wireless router called "DLINK" makes a passable free internet connection provided you don't try download anything.

More to come (and a ton of pictures.)