Wednesday 19th September 2018.

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We awaken on our first day surprisingly early, around 6.30 am. Although we probably could have gone back to sleep, we decide to get up, as we have many things to sort out today.

Luckily, our to-do-list is now one job shorter, as we set our phone number up at the airport. Breakfast is our priority, we haven’t yet done a food shop, and so grab ourselves a McMuffin Meal, complete with proper Barista Coffee! Stomachs full, we start our mission, first stop - the bank, so we can set up a New Zealand bank account. Upon arrival at the bank however, we realise that none of them open until 9 am, and it’s not even 8 yet.

Even with just walking around for this small period, we are sensing how relaxed everybody seems to be here. We’re in the capital city, at this time in London it would be absolute carnage. Everybody is peacefully walking around, there isn’t much traffic, no ones beeping any horns. This may be partly due to the fact that there’s double the amount of people in London alone, than there is the whole of New Zealand combined!!

We quickly pop back to the hostel to grab a print out of a proof of a New Zealand address, as they accept that of the hostel you’re staying in. After this, we go back to the bank. Unfortunately, you need to sit down for an hour to set up these accounts, and every single bank in the city centre appears to be full until next week. We manage to secure a meeting just outside of the centre in a place called Britomart, which is an 11 minute train journey. We pop to the station, and realise it’s Auckland’s equivalent to the London Underground, with its own internal routes.

On our short journey, we pass a stadium, with a big advertisement of a Cher concert, and the dates just happen to be this Friday and Saturday!! We assume that they must have sold out, but decide to have a look anyway, and to our utter surprise and satisfaction, there on but a handful of tickets left! We decide that we simply cannot turn down an opportunity like this, as it may well be the last chance we have to see her, and it seems fate has made it happen.

The jet lag, mixed with the pure excitement of seeing one of our hero’s on Friday, leaves our minds feeling quite spaced out. The mission must be completed! We arrive, and everything is very easily set up, and done for us both within an hour. We have to wait 15 minutes for the cards to activate before they can print us off a statement, which is what we need to get our IRD numbers, so we decide to go to the sushi bar opposite for lunch.

Sushi is a great love of mine and Danny’s, and this sushi looks amazing! It appears that Kiwi’s all love sushi, as there seems to be more sushi restaurants than anything else. The sushi tastes just as amazing as it looks, and I even had caviar on one piece. Time to grab the statement and head back.

The next job is the IRD number, you need this in order to stop yourself being taxed a crazy amount whist you work here. We’ve already filled out the form, so it shouldn’t take long hopefully, as tiredness is beginning to creep in again, and we still need to do a food shop. We hand the forms over, and she informs us we’ll receive email confirmation of the number. The food shop is just down the road, so we make that the next stop. We’re apprehensive, as we’ve heard lots about how it can be quite expensive to shop here. We don’t actually find it too bad, there are lots of offers which we snap up, and even get a points card, which can get you discounts.

That’s all the jobs done off my list, Danny still has to go to Specsavers, as I managed to push him on to his glasses just last week and it bent the arms.. Oops! I decide to go back with the shopping whist he sorts that out. My original plan was to get back and do some yoga, as I’m feeling quite stiff from the flights and having not done it in a couple of days. However, what actually happens is I lie down for a minute, and fall asleep for 4 hours.

When I awaken, Danny is now asleep beside me. By the time he wakes up, it’s almost 9 pm, and we haven’t even eaten dinner yet. I quickly go down to the communal kitchen, and make us a quinoa salad. We eat and shower and quite quickly fall back to sleep again.

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