Finally made it!

After what felt like a week solid of traveling we finally made it to New Zealand and our final “home” on Mt. Ruapehu! Our journey started Wednesday night at 11:30pm when we took off from LAX on the HUGE Qantas A380 airbus...a full 2 story plane! Inside it felt normal until you started thinking about the fact that there was an entire level above you! Ashley took a little journey around and walked up the stairs once in the back to take a look but didn't see much. 15.5 hours is a looong flight. Even with the great personal entertainment systems at each seat and the extra leg room and wider seats, there just isn't a way to sleep comfortable (or, in Ashley's case, at all). We both watched 4 different movies each and a few tv shows and played some video games. It was really strange for it to never get light until right before we landed. We were basically running away from the sun the entire flight and it finally caught up in Australia! We had a 8 hour lay-over in Melbourne, and after the run-around of having one bag make it through to baggage claim and finding out the other 2 (supposedly) were checked all the way through, we headed to downtown Melbourne city and walked around for a few hours. It's a large business city with many different 'precincts, city sub-sections, of different nationalities and personalities. We enjoyed walking around a sampling food from all over the world and were surprised to find out that the area has a large Asian population. Guess that makes sense since Asia is so close.

After wearing ourselves out walking for about 4 hours we went back to the airport only to find out our flight had been rescheduled to leave an hour later than planned. By now, we had been up for almost 2 days and were just ready to get here and sleep! The 3 and a half hour flight to Auckland was a bit cramped, but at least Qantas has really good food, and free wine (on both flights)! So we were able to survive. Making it through immigration was a breeze for Daniel since we had our visas already processed, but didn't think about the fact that Ashley got a new Passport a month ago and her visa was processed on the old one...oops! Right then and there we found out how nice New Zealanders are, everyone was so smiley and friendly and took care of processing the visa quickly and we went right through after maybe a 10 minute delay....just to find our bags the last lonely bags on the carrousel but Ashley's snowboard nowhere in sight. In our traveling the past few years we've found it's never a good sign when the baggage assistance people know your name! They were waiting for us to tell her the snowboard hadn't even left LA with us! I guess it sat there for about 10 hours before hoping a flight straight here and arrived sometime Saturday morning and was delivered to the hotel while we were out exploring Auckland Good thing is that we didn't have to deal with carrying it on the shuttle to the hotel at 1am :-D

Finally, we got out to explore Auckland and hit up the Vodafone store and purchased a local prepaid SIM card and get a local number. So our phones are now officially off. Daniel's for good, and Ashley's number is on hold until December 20th when we get back. Our new number is +64211750191 and, for probably $5 a minute, you can call us all you want!! jk, ok so we won't expect many calls, it costs us about $.50/min so we'll call when we can. We'll also try and update this blog as often as possible with photos and video, just depends on how much this internet actually ends up costing. We have wireless here at the staff lodging and it's costs $.10 per MB of usage...whatever that really adds up to!

Sunday morning, bright and early (well, DARK and early—before the sun was us) we boarded the train south for our 7 hour journey to National Park. It took longer than normal because of a small engine fire and a lot of track work...nothing serious right?! lol! Our new boss picked us up and the train station and drove us about 15km to the staff lodging in Whakapapa Village, our "home" for the next 4 months! We've started to meet the other staff and they come from all over the world. Quite a few Americans actually, others from Australia and New Zealand obviously and from other places such as France, Germany, England, and even Latvia (shout out to all the Lennon's out there!) We were taken up to the mountain today and got our uniforms issued, got our bearings, bought a few last winter clothes supplies and came back down to chill at “home”. Daniel bought some new snowboard boots and a used board so he's all set to go! Work starts bright and early Tuesday with our induction and training and the ski field opens Saturday! Time to get back to the working world! http://www.mtruapehu.com/

It's finally Monday afternoon here...I think it's Sunday night back in the states...the date and time here is still a strange concept. We left Wednesday night, arrived in Melbourne about 15 hours later FRIDAY morning, and got to our hotel about midnight Saturday morning. To calculate our time here, just subtract 5 hours from CA time, or 7 hours from Central time...but then ADD a day. It's 3:15pm Monday here, and about 9:15pm/11:15pm Sunday back home. Start thinking too long about the time warp and you'll go crazy! we finally both got dual time zone watches so we don't have to keep converting time. Ashley set her second time for PST and Daniel set his for CST...we'll never NOT be confused with that now!

Hope you all keep in touch with us and keep us updated on summer life back in the Northern Hemisphere...we're off to enjoy a snowy winter!!