Candice & Trevor's Blog: Auckland is "coo as" (Nov 11-15)

We arrived in Auckland late on Nov 11^th to stay in with the Kiwi Listers – Ron, Louise, Ben, Victor and Maddie. The first night we stayed up chatting with Ron and Louise and learned all about how the game Cricket works; which the boys all play. The next day the boys let me know that they were listening to us from their beds and laughing at our accents and the fact that we know “nothing”… nothing about cricket that is haha. On our second day with them the boys invited us to play cricket in the yard which was a lot of fun. I don’t think we were very good but the boys were really patient and encouraging. They have all welcomed us into their home and have been so nice. Trevor hasn’t seen Ron & Louise in around 20 years and had never met the boys but they definitely feel like family.

It is spring time here in New Zealand has been 18-20 degrees range with summer starting in December until February. It actually feels a lot like Vancouver here except the plants are really exotic looking. It’s very green here with lots of hills and the mountains in the distance. The roads are super windy and although we haven’t seen a speed limit over 110 the speed limits seem to be high for the roads. For example, on most roads we couldn’t speed if we wanted to cause the roads are so windy and we end up going several km’s under the speed limit. There are also “heaps” of traffic circles here (making me car sick while I type :S).

They have a lot of the same food chains as home like subway, KFC (way nicer KFC’s than at home), Burger King. I haven’t seen any of the same stores as we have but the malls still seem similar. You get used to the accent pretty quickly.. but there is the odd phrase or word that doesn’t make sense to me… Like “Entrée” is an appy, “Tomato Sauce” is Ketchup, tea is "dinner" etc.