So we took a thirteen hour flight from San Francisco on Monday night and landed in Auckland on Wednesday morning. The flight felt like it lasted two days. When we landed we breezed through customs and took a shuttle to our new home. It's an extremely small Hotel/Apartment. Two bedrooms and one bathroom. The kitchen, dining room and the living room are all built into one. We all took showers and ventured out to the streets of downtown Auckland.

The weather was a little cool with on and off rain. The culture her seems to be a little different. I'm guessing the fashion is from the eighties. The english that is spoken is sometimes hard to understand. So far everyone seems friendly. The streets of Auckland have a lot of diversity with thousands of food options. It seems like there is Sushi and Liquor on every block. The first place we went into was a Starbucks. The coffee seemed to be a little stronger than we are used to. I felt like everyone in Starbucks was looking at us as we ordered.

The next stop was the bank to exchange our currency. The New Zealand Dollar is very interesting, it has a plastic feel to it and the smallest bill is a five. As the bills increase in value they also increase in size. I haven't quite figured out the coins just yet. I know there is a two dollar and one dollar coin.

As we were headed home from Queens street we noticed everyone was lining the street. So just like everyone else we decided to see what was going on. The was a parade coming down the street and everyone was cheering. As it got closer we noticed that the ladies in the parade were all topless. The parade was called "Boobs on Bikes". My fourteen year old daughter seemed a little embarrassed and my wife couldn't believe her eyes. We laughed and headed towards home through the eighty thousand people lining the street.

We stopped at a little C-store near our apartment to buy a few items. When we were checking out I noticed the prices were way high. $11.00 for a box of cereal!!!!!! Ouch! I then realized that I needed a job.