New Country, Who Dis?

 It was a relief to get out of L.A but we got into another bout of big-city life landing in Auckland. 

We might've made a mistake with our six massive check-in bags. It was quite the feat rolling them into two trolleys and just hoping they could all fit in a Prius (seriously the most popular Uber car). I do remember when we inevitably had one fall off a cart, a couple swooped in to help. We thanked them and had to apologize for being super jet-lagged an uncoordinated and also mentioned it was our first day in our brand new country. It was something out of a movie. The woman was super delighted and said something to the extent of "Welcome to New Zealand, Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud. You're going to love it here!"

It was super confidence boosting since this decision still sometimes feels like a leap of faith. 

When we finally got an Uber, it was a Toyota Camry driven by a nice man named Mohammed possibly. He was absolutely delightful. When we mentioned we were going to buy a RAV 4, he tried to call his dealership friends to help us out since he used to work at a Toyota. 

Auckland was going through some serious construction as they try to build an underground rail system, which includes serious tunnel boring machine action and several closed streets including the one for our hotel. Our driver was a real pro though and got us as close as he could. Sean really got a workout carrying arm loads of our 50 pound bags while I watched the rest of them. 

By the time everything was shoved into temporary storage it was about 9 AM in the morning at this point and check-in was an agonizing 6 hours away so we had to do something with our time. We decided to take to the streets. We first stopped at an Evo, a New Zealand bike shop chain, and inquired what kinds of bikes were actually available. Sean ended up nerding out about mountain bikes with the British sales clerk while a patiently waited for him to get all his small talk out. At 10, the bank was finally open and we finished opening up our account with KiwiBank. 

We had a lovely person named Craig help us get things set and it was relatively painless. He was strangely a Philadelphia Eagles fan for no apparent reason except one time he went to boarding school and someone mentioned it was their favorite team. He has never set foot in the United States. Fun facts about NZ banking. They can issue you a debit card sans your actual name written on it the same day. Also, in lieu of Venmo, they're a big fan of account2account which is basically a way to give someone your bank account number directly to place a deposit in. 

To make sure things were super set with the bank we also needed to get phone numbers. We did this at Spark, since my company kept talking about putting in another sim card so I had a separate company number. Sean and I caved in and got the fun foldy phones from Samsung. They are super entertaining and kind of remind me of my old Nintendo. This was also quite painless and once we were done there and also set at the bank it was about lunchtime.  I will say our first impressions of NZ are that things are a lot more efficient here. We seriously had whole days allotted for these tasks and it took about three hours if not less.  

We had lunch at Shoya, a ramen place I've been dreaming about since our trip last December before we finally got to crash in our not-as-big-as-I-hoped hotel room. 

First Day in NZ done and dusted. Whew!

Pictured

All the bags in the universe

Our very first, very flattering phone pics. We are v. jet-lagged







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hanleys Farm

Image
We're in Airbnb #2 in one of Queenstown's surrounding suburbs, Hanleys Farm. Hanley's also happens to be where we'll be renting our house so it's so much closer to feeling like settling in. In a way, NZ suburbs are like US suburbs but really they're more like little pods of neighborhoods. When you mail anything to the suburbs, the overlying city we're all part of is still Queenstown. There isn't even a coffee shop here or restaurants- just a pump track. Everyone also has to have a P.O Box since the mail carrier doesn't go this far.  Fun fact, Hanleys is adjacent to a bougier neighborhood called Jack's Point. They have some slight beef as the Jack's Point people would like to not be associated with Hanley's riff raff. They're walking distance though so people from both burbs like to stroll over to the clubhouse to grab coffee and eat at the restaurant. When the town's water was infected with cryptosporidium recently, Jack's Poi...
Read more

Origin Stories

 I feel like I've been re-iterating this story for months.  It started with a super casual work email. My boss Dave is always pushing exciting opportunities our way since CDOT is lovely and all that but can be a dead-end street in terms of opportunity. This one was just a link- New Zealand regards geotechnical engineering as one of their green pathway careers. We need more people to do dirt math! This one was May 27, 2022 ( I looked it up) because it started the ball rolling on a casual look at LinkedIn and what was going on in Queenstown,  a casual email to WSP, a video call + like two more, an eventual trip to the country itself, an email of interest and then a super serious job offer.  Why would I say no? The usual: family, friends, life But what would I be missing out on? I think this would probably haunt me into perpetuity if I didn't say yes.  Our Boulder stats are really alarming.  Sean and I have been together since 2012 Townhome-Apartment- Apartmen...
Read more

Things I love about Boulder...a running list

  There's always someone showing you the resiliency of a human body. Rain or shine, there's someone being active outside of my window. It's a city of try-hards but it shows you to never give up on yourself.  The Bookworm.   Those burner people and old hippies who deck out their bikes on Thursdays. The rollerbladeability of Boulder Creek Path. I love grabbing a drink at Kettle and Spoke after a sketchy traverse through the parking lot.  The Parkway Cafe. The Saturday specials are genius.   Mountain biking at sunset  How the Southern Sun is unchanged after 12 years.  Being able to bike most places.  Sanitas Brewing's patio and Train Beer.   Full Throttle Yoga at Sanitas on a Sunday The Outback Saloon  The Korea House Early morning trail runs, especially when the trailhead is super close to my house! The parking lot for Fairview high overlooking Viele Lake. Some of the best views of the Flatirons.  The Goat Trail especia...
Read more