Save the whales, man...

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Matt and I went for our Greenpeace interview yesterday. It was much different than we expected and we were almost an hour late, which was not a good. We are still working at the hostel in the mornings (from 10am to 1 pm) so that we can stay for free. It's pretty easy work, just gross and tedious. So, that is to say that we get done at one and had to be in Mt. Eden (about 5 km away) by two. We needed to shower to get the gunk off us from scrubbing walls so that set us back a little farther. When I spoke to the Greenpeace lady on the phone, she told us that there is a bus right up the road from us that we could catch to get to Mt. Eden. What she didn't know was that they are doing construction and shut down that bus stop. We walked all around Auckland to try to find the right bus (visiting over a dozen stops on the way) asking people where to go. It was almost comical. Every stop they told us to go to another and another and none of them were right. We ended up going in a huge circle ending up the opposite direction from where we started across from the token strip club called Showgirls. Classy.

Once we finally got the bus, we were not sure where in Mt. Eden to get off. Matt decided the first stop would be the money, but he was wrong. Way wrong. We were on the other side of Mt. Eden from where we needed to be. Meanwhile, it is now about 2:30 and raining. We met a nice student named Helen who was standing on the corner and agreed to take us to Greenpeace seeing as she was about to walk that way for work anyhow. She was late and we were late, so we had to effectively jog the whole way, which, at a slow jog/fast walk took about 20 or 25 more minutes. Uphill. In the rain. I kid you not.

So we finally got to Greenpeace for what we thought was going to be an informal one on one interview, more like a personality test, only to find that it in fact a very formal group interview with about eight 20-somethings and three quintessential Greenpeace hippie types.

We did role playing games to practice talking to random people about Greenpeace events and answered some questions. They wanted to make sure we had thick skin since some people are actually quite hostile to Greenpeace workers (calling names like Nazi, communist, tree hugger, ect) especially since we are Americans, since, let's be honest, America keeps Greenpeace in business... We assured them that we could separate ourselves enough to realize that, although we are Americans, neither Matt nor I are, in and of ourselves, America.

We ended up getting the job (despite being late and being from America) and we'll start Monday. I'm totally stoked since the job is in the afternoon which will allow us to still "volunteer" at the hostel. Now we'll be making $15 dollars an hour starting (with the potential to increase to up to $20 an hour) and we have free housing. Also, Greenpeace is all over New Zealand, giving us the chance to travel the country and not have to seek out other forms of employment, as long as we meet our quota for donations. Also, the Base Backpackers hostel has other locations near Greenpeace so we have the potential to keep sleeping for free...

After the good news we went back to the main drag in Mt. Eden to catch the bus back. So there we are, standing outside of Wendy's, waiting for the bus, when Matt realizes that he dropped his money sometime during the interview (NZ, like many countries, have coins for one and two dollars). The bus is only a dollar fifty, but I only had $2.70, just shy of two tickets home. I guess my voice carries (big revelation, I know) and some lady in a small red car waiting at the stop light yells to us, leans out her window and throws a dollar at us from the car. I love this country.

Later that night we went to QF Tavern and did karaoke again with some Swedish people from our room and some London people we met playing cards. Also a German girl showed up that Matt had talked to at a different bar earlier this week. We were a multi-cultural cacophony.

Sorry this email is so long, but I wanted to share about our interview.

I still miss you all and wish the each of you could be here to share this experience. It is the most incredible thing I have ever had the chance to do. I encourage all of you to travel if you can.

I love you all and will try to write again soon. Please feel free to write me back and let me know what's going on in your lives as well. I love to still feel connected at least a little.

Cheers, mates!
Dan

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