Welcome to AUCKLAND!

Hi!!! We arrived in Auckland a few hours ago and were greeted by our first New Zealand sunrise, went to Torre's meeting and now we are back at the airport waiting for our next flight to Palmerston North at 12:45pm. Palmerston is about 45min from Levin so we will get a rental car and drive to Levin. The flight here was really good...we slept prob 6ish hours and they fed us dinner and breakfast. :) Our taxi driver, Peter, took us on a short city tour to the "One Tree Hill" Monument in the center of town. Apparently there used to be one lone tree atop this huge volcanic mountain in the middle of Auckland and a Islander chopped it down in protest. He must have been really upset! One Tree Hill is on a reserve that was donated to the city and it's actually farming land! There were tons of sheep and lambs all over the place as well as cattle. Auckland is a city of approximately one million people and Levin, where we are going to be living, has a population of approximately 23,000. Big difference! Peter laughed when he heard we were going there because he said it's very rural. We are getting ready to get some lunch so we will be in touch as soon as we can find internet again. We asked Peter what we should know about New Zealand as new comers and he said one of the most important things was for us to make sure we look both ways before we cross the street but to make sure we revers the order of direction that we normally look! He was really nice. :)

Our first sunrise in Auckland, NZ

View of downtown Auckland from One Tree Hill

Goodbye from LAX! See you on the other side! :D