First week settling in

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(I'm writing this on 5th August so may have left some stuff out and mixed up tenses!)

So the flight.....in total it was around 26 hours including two stop overs in Dubai and Melbourne. I couldn’t really sleep properly so the long leg from Dubai is all a bit of a blur. Sat next to a girl from Germany, studying at Auckland Uni so at least I had someone to talk on the flight and during the stopover.

Managed to get through customs pretty swiftly but had a slight problem going through ‘Biosecurity’. I didn’t realise that I needed to declare my football boots so I was taken aside and told about all the pesticides which the odd smudge of mud on my boots could contain! So I’m on a warning! Which means if it happens again it’s a $400 fine. (The guy wasn’t too happy when I corrected him about my boots being ‘football boots’ and not ‘rugby boots’!)

I arrived off the plane and found the weather to be pretty mild and sunny. Their winter is a lot warmer than ours, with plenty of sun but is also prone to a fair amount of rain, so overall it's pretty random! But better than the UK. The apartment block I'm staying in is basically for foreign students which means there are tonnes of Asians! Have a double room (but the bed is very hard!) with my own bathroom and share the kitchen (with no oven!)/lounge with a Dutch guy - Wouter - and we’re getting on pretty well. He’s also doing an internship through Student Down Under (SDU - the agency I went through to get the job). As SDU are a Dutch company and don’t promote themselves that much in the UK, the majority of people I’m meeting are either; Dutch, French or German which makes it quite interesting as I’m the only English! So I've been 'exercising' the little German and French I know. This also means I'm not gonna pick up a Kiwi accent.

I had a week before I started work to settle in, recover from jet lag (which only took a day or two) and explore a bit. I could have been more productive with that time but as its winter, there are a lot of things I want to do/see which would be better in warmer/sunnier weather. So most days I wandered down to Queen Street - which is the main road in Auckland with a lot of high rise buildings and shops - to sort a few things out. The population density is pretty low here and most Kiwis live out in the suburbs, away from the centre, which leaves mostly students/foreigners and a VERY multicultural feel around.

We had great weather on the weekend so I went to Mount Eden which has an amazing panoramic view of the city and went jogging in Auckland Domain - the biggest park near the centre. On the Friday there was a party in our building - most of the other SDU interns live here or nearby - so I got to meet quite a few other people. The majority of them have been here a while but there are a few of us who are all quite new which is useful for when you want to organise trips/see new places. On the Saturday we saw Inception - definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it already.

Everything is quite expensive thanks to the weak pound! Cheers Gordon. There doesn't seem to be any companies like Primark or the big supermarkets we have in the UK who aim for the lower end of the market, so it's quite hard to live cheaply! Also not knowing the best shops/brands for the cheaper stuff doesn't help either.

On the whole, the first week was pretty slow so I was looking forward to getting to know the other interns better and starting work.

Leo x

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Comments

[annie blake]

looks as though you have settled in fast, made loads of friends and done lots already. Sounds great and Dad and I can's wait to come out in Jan 2011. Glad the job ok and sounds very sociable and friendly. Miss you lots. Seem to have masses of ketchup in the house. I wonder why! much love Mum x