Highs and Lows

I'm talking about altitude, of course. Over the last week I've been to some of Auckland's lowest and highest points: Point Chevalier Beach and One Tree Hill.

No local would ever call it Point Chevalier Beach. Case in point--I was trying to tell someone here at International House that I had been there:

Me: "I went to Point Chevalier Beach today."

Patient Local: "Huh?"

Me: "Point Chevalier...I mean, uh, Point 'Chev"

Patient Local: "Oh, 'Chev Beach?"

Me: "Uh, yeah"."

Patient Local: "Sweet as."

(I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but one of my favorite Kiwi phrases is "Sweet as." Kiwis put "as" after any adjective, without any additional modifiers. Things can be "sweet as," "small as," "easy as," and so forth. Example sentence? "Ay mate, that restaurant serves heaps of chips and L&P cheap as." More about L&P later).

Anyway, 'Chev Beach is about three bus "stages" away from Auckland CBD, to the Northwest. It's a small beach with a nice little playground/green space called Coyle Park next door. It was a beautiful day, and nice views were to be had of both the CBD and the Auckland Harbour Bridge. The beach was nice too, but there wasn't much else to do.

On the other end of the altitude spectrum, today I went over to One Tree Hill.

No, not the sappy teen drama on The WB (or The CW). One Tree Hill is the second highest point in Auckland, besides Mt. Eden, which I already climbed a few weeks ago. They went here on one of the first seasons of the Amazing Race, the first of four times that they were in Auckland (they also went to Mt. Eden).

One Tree Hill, or Maungakiekie, is a fairly controversial volcanic cone. Long story short: Maungakiekie was a very important and spiritual place for the native Maori. Along came Sir John Logan Campbell, the "Father of Auckland," who sort of appropriated the place for himself. When he died, he left instructions in his will to build an obelisk on One Tree Hill to serve as his gravesite, supposedly in "honor of his admiration of the Maori people." The sacred trees of One Tree Hill were cut down: one in the 1800s by some white guy, one in 1994 by Maori activists (the sign at the site called them "Maori protestors") and again in 2000. So now there are no trees on top of One Tree Hill, just John Logan Campbell's obelisk.

Apparently U2 wrote a song about it, which is where the title of the WB series comes from. I had never heard of it, so I heard it on Youtube at our blazing fast 20 Kb/sec download rate. It was OK, I guess. Being there was better. Plus there were sheep!

Whangarei

Whangarei seemed to be a typical New Zealand town, with a 5 km-long central main street, called Bank Street, filled with two-story shops, cafes, and offices. Right next to the bus stop was a little open-air mall called The Strand. On the other side of the rows of shops, there was this nice little pedestrian area.

About a kilometer past the town center was the Town Basin, a really cool harbor area.

After I arrived, I immediately walked a kilometer down to the i-Site that I had seen from the window of the bus. i-Sites are information centers that are located in basically every town of any size and have maps and directions.

As an aside, I should probably mention what it's like being a pedestrian in New Zealand. The first challenge for someone from the US is knowing which way to look when one crosses the street. I think I finally have the knack of looking over my right shoulder instead of my left when I cross (a good guide is looking at which direction cars are parked), but every so often a car comes out of somewhere that surprises me. Pedestrians never seem to have the right of way here except in crosswalks when crossing signals are on. A number of times I've been walking and encountered a car pulling out of a driveway 10 meters from me, or making a turn. In any US city, the car would wave the pedestrian on, but here, cars just continue to zoom along. Adding to the danger is that crosswalks are often few and far between, located only at traffic lights. So, walking to the i-Site, I had a couple of interesting crossings at a rotary and elsewhere.

I grabbed a bunch of brochures at the i-Site and looked them over at lunch. I was originally planning to go to Whangarei Falls, which the i-Site billed as "the most photogenic waterfalls in NZ," but it was a 5km walk one-way and I didn't feel like hiring (renting) a bike. Instead, I decided that I'd walk up to the lookout point of Mt. Parihaka.

Mt. Parihaka is a ~1000 ft. "mount" that overlooks Whangarei. The path to the top starts in Mair Park, which was a nice little recreation area. Behind a carpark emerged a stream, with a pedestrian footbridge over some murky water inhabited by some very perky ducks (ducks and gulls seem to be very loud and aggressive here). From there, I chose the "Hammond Trail," named after some conservation guy who had done something for the park. The sign promised "1.3 km, 1,650 steps."

As one might expect, each of those 1,650 steps was uphill. The path was well-maintained, but there were hundreds of wood-faced steps leading up to the top. The walk (combined with trying to walk anywhere in Auckland, the city of hills) was yet another reminder that my fitness level degraded from "below average" to "poor" over the summer.

Halfway up, during one of my frequent rest breaks, I heard a strange bird sound. I took off my headphones, and even with my below-amateur-level birding ability, was able to easily spot the bird on a tree 20 meters away. The bird was producing a ton of different vocalizations, and had distinctive white tufts of feathers on its neck. As I found through an internet search later, I think I was looking at a tui, who are, according to Wikipedia, "known for their noisy, unusual call, different for each individual, that combine bellbird-like notes with clicks, cackles, timber-like creaks and groans, and wheezing sounds—the unusual possession of two voiceboxes enable Tui to perform such a myriad of vocalisations."

After huffing and puffing up the hill for an hour, I finally reached the summit and lookout point. As with all of these mountain walks, the climb always leads to a nice reward--in this case, a view of the whole of Whangarei.

Forgive the lighting on this shot, I obviously didn't take this picture

There was a car park right near the lookout point so that shlubs could drive up to the summit rather than walk, and a few people started to filter in as I was standing at the lookout point. A nice guy, his wife, their infant, and a teenage girl (who, from their conversation, seemed to be an exchange student who had just moved in with the family) came up to me as soon as I reached the summit.

Guy: "Hello"

Me: "Hi, how's it going" (My first mistake...I should have said "How you going")

Guy (immediately): "Where are you from?"

Me: "The U.S."

Guy: "Oh, I guessed wrong."

Me: "Where did you think I was from?"

Guy: "I was going to say Germany."

I don't really know what to make of that.

Another priceless conversation:

Guy: "What part of the States are you from?"

Me: "Boston."

Guy: "Oh, I don't know much about Boston....Boston Legal...the Celtics! {Ed. note: the only basketball jerseys available on this island seem to be Paul Pierce Celtics jerseys from five years ago} Oh! The Boston Tea Party, right??"

Me: "Yeah"

Guy: "I have no idea what that is."

After taking my fill of the view, I descended Mt. Paranaki and walked around the town for the next few hours. Frustrating note: all of New Zealand seems to close at 4pm (especially on Saturdays). Nothing seems to be open at all on Sunday. I literally walked around the center of town for an hour and only encountered two open restaurants (Pizza Hut and KFC). New Zealand has a great cafe culture, but it all seems to shut down after lunch, and even cities as big as Auckland can become ghost towns when the sun sets.

I also wanted to go in this store, but a picture will have to suffice.

Papers

In case you want to know what courses, here are my papers for this semester. Side note: classes here are called "papers," and papers that you write would be referred to as essays.

I started off my week with a paper on the economics of energy resources. This promises to be an interesting class moving forward, as we'll be talking about some real hot topics with renewable energy and global warming. The first class didn't contain much economics, and Prof. P. (*ed. note: while I'm still in these classes, I'm not going to refer to professors by their real names. Who knows who might be reading/googling this. These may not even be professors' real initials!*) wasn't particularly engaging. Hopefully the pace will pick up as time moves forward.

I also have a sociology paper about Auckland and its citizens. I hadn't been too excited about this class before I started, but I think it will be really cool to be living amongst the city my class is about. Surprisingly, the course coordinator isn't a native Kiwi, but actually an American born in California who, after spending several years of childhood on a boat in the South Pacific, found his way to Auckland a decade ago. Everything about Prof. A.--the enthusiasm, the frequent use of notes, the awkward jokes, and the quick pace--screamed "I'm a Ph. D. student giving his first lecture!" Having done SI, I can relate. Prof A.'s enthusiasm about the course was contagious though, and nearly half the classes will feature guest lecturers who are experts in various parts of Auckland.

In contrast to Prof A.'s first-lecture jitters, Prof. R. from my Economic Analysis class seemed much more comfortable in front of a large class. Prof. R. is of my favorite breed of professors--easy to listen to, knowledgable, and focused on providing clear instruction. This paper lays the foundation for the math needed to move on for graduate work in econ, and I'm glad to be taking it overseas as the AU professor who normally teaches the equivalent class gets mixed reviews. Prof. R. is team-teaching the class with Ph. D. student Prof C., whom I haven't met yet, so hopefully he'll be equally good for the first six weeks before Prof. R. takes over for the second six weeks.

My final class was an intro to math proofs class. This is an important class for me, because it lays the groundwork for the other math classes I'll need to take when I get back to AU if I want to continue to econ grad school. I wasn't a fan of Prof. M. on the first day. He started off with one of my pet peeves: his first sentence was "This is not the most popular class." I can't stand professors who start out by telling the class how hard the material is and how likely they are to not do well. He even went so far as to say that proofs were about ability, not effort, and made it seem as if the talents needed to succeed in the class couldn't be built by practice. He also lectured in a style that reminded me of Prof. B. from AU last semester--writing only partial thoughts, words, symbols, and tangents on the board without fully explaining anything. Prof. M. certainly didn't have the patient, calm, and crystal-clear style of the incomparable Prof. E. from AU.

However, by the second class, Prof. M. started to improve. He passed out lecture notes that were clear and concise, and seemed to be focused more on teaching the subject than just talking about it. Hopefully this class, which is so dependant on precision and accuracy, will be filled with reasonable expectations and clear thought.

Weekend Bus Trip

Classes have started up by now. It's amazing how easy it is to fall back into the student routine, even just two weeks in. Wake up, go to class, listen, read, eat, procrastinate, repeat. Walking down Symonds Street on the way to university, I encounter more and more people I know or recognize from International House. As such, my comfort level living here increases every day.

Last weekend I took a trip to the city of Whangarei (pronounced Faa-Naa-Ray). Whangarei is the capital (pop. 60,000) of Northland, which is the northern section of New Zealand that contains the Bay of Islands. I wanted to get out of the city at least once before classes started, and Whangarei, which is three hours from Auckland, was a perfect distance for a day trip.

The trip was also a chance for me to investigate the two bus companies that I'm going to be traveling with when I bus around the South Island in late August/early September. Intercity and Nakedbus (so called because they "strip down everything, including the fares") are designed in part for locals, as they offer services to many towns that the backpacker buses don't go near. Yet, with at least $1 ticket available on each segment, they can be an affordable way to travel if you time your purchases right.

I traveled with Intercity first on the way out to Whangarei. The Intercity terminal is located at the base of Sky Tower, which is about a 20-minute walk from my residence hall. Boarding was wicked easy--I just gave the driver my confirmation number, he checked me off a list, and I was good to go. My traveling companions seemed to be mostly locals with a few identifiable travelers mixed in. There were a surprising number of family members at the terminal to send off whomever was traveling ("Say hi to the Johnsons for us!" etc.) and a few unaccompanied minors. The buses was about half full, so I got a row to myself.

The bus started off going over Auckland's massive Harbor Bridge, and I was treated to the great view of the city in the morning. But just 30 minutes outside of Auckland, the concrete scenery started to change to rolling hills, mountains, and lush green valleys. Traveling on NZ's country-long Motorway 1. we passed by sheep and dairy farms, small towns, and through treacherous windy roads. Unfortunately I had picked the sunny side of the bus, so I was trying to block out the sun while taking in the views. Nevertheless, and no offense to Auckland, but this felt like the "real" New Zealand--the one I had signed up for.

The bus made stops in several towns--the Auckland suburb of Owera and the small village of Kaiwaka, to name a few. The bus driver grumbled about having to stop in the pastoral town of Warkworth even though no one was getting on or off, but the rain from the previous day created this rainbow that made the stop worthwhile.

After three hours, including a break for tea, we arrived in Whangarei. I was planning to include Whangarei in this post, but I think I'll break it off into its own later in the week.

Nakedbus offered a similar experience on the way back. I had heard that Nakedbus used some inferior coaches, but the bus that pulled into Whangarei was equally as new and nice as the Intercity one. It was nearly dark by this point, which made cruising through windy Motorway 1 at 100 km/h that much more exciting (and nervewracking). In the dark of the bus cabin, I had two distinct reactions simultaneously: that this scene of me sitting in a dark bus speeding down a one-lane road could be happening anywhere in the world, yet, conversely, I felt like I was unmistakeably in New Zealand for the first time on this trip.

Buses

I love buses. In a city like Auckland or DC, there's no more enjoyable way to get around. Buses get you to your destination in relative comfort while allowing you to see the sights and learn your way around, plus they're a great opportunity to people watch. On a bus in Auckland, any of the following could happen to you:

--You may experience the bus driver in the middle of a route pulling over to a stop, shutting off the bus, and annoucing to the passengers "10 minutes [sic] break!"

--Your seatmate may be a spry 90-year-old woman on her way to the gym.

--You may see a yellow Hummer stretch limo parked on the side of Customs St., with a photographer standing in the middle of the road, tripod extended and ready to go. Then, a chauffeur may open the door of the limo. Two beautiful women, dressed to the nines, might emerge, followed by a Vinny Chase-celebrity type guy wearing sunglasses (even though it is nighttime) and hip jeans. The celebrity-esque figure could then, conceivably, cross two lanes of active traffic, waving to no one but the camera, before walking back to the limo and redoing the scene three or four times.

These are all just hypothetical possibilities, of course.

While buses are a great way to get around here, they are certainly not easy to figure out. There are hundreds of bus lines in Auckland, many of which share a good portion of their route. However, unlike DC, where I know that a N2, N3, N4, or N6 bus will somehow get me from Friendship Heights to Farragut Square, even the buses with similar routes here do not share common destinations. That is, there may be a dozen different bus lines that go between Symonds St. and Mt. Eden, but they all have different numbers and different destinations listed on the top of the bus. It doesn't help that many of the place names here are based in the Maori language. It's not easy to remember the difference between Papakure, Papatoetoe, and Te Papapa, especially when you have to make a split decision whether to board a bus or not.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that there are many different bus operators in Auckland. There are the purple Metrolink buses, the gray Waka Pacific buses, green Go West! buses, beige Howick & Eastern buses, green Link buses, and supposedly two more companies called Northstar and Ritchie's whose buses I've never seen.

Fortunately, all of the buses have the same fare structure. A standard bus ride is divided into "stages" based on the distance you travel. The longer you travel, the more stages and the more you pay. When you get on the bus, you tell the driver how many stages you're going, and place your money into a little tray. The driver gives you back your change, and a little receipt ribbon prints out that you take as evidence of your fare. One stage is NZD$1.70 (US$1.20) on all of the buses, and if your trip is just within the city center, you only pay NZD$0.50 (US$0.35).

As a tertiary student, I'm entitled to a generous 40% discount on fares as long as I buy my rides in advance (in groups of 10 rides for NZD$10) and use my Go Rider card. Go Rider is a plastic card with a dangerously exposed RFID computer chip that plugs into a little reader on the farebox. The driver then prints out your receipt, and one ride is deducted from your tally. I've been told that the Go Rider works on all the buses except Howick & Eastern, but I haven't tried it on all of the others besides Metrolink.

As a final nice touch, many bus stops are equipped with electronic signs that tell you when the next bus is due to arrive, with mediocre accuracy. It's better than having to call a number for this information like I do in DC--provided, of course, that you know what your destination is.

I also enjoy some of the bus stop ads. Why not try Sanitarium Brand Coconut Crunch Cluster Crisp? It's the Tasty New Mix of Interesting Bits! In the background is a female robot in a hoop skirt doing the macarena (I've also seen the TV version of this ad, which is equally disturbing).

And speaking of buses, I just got an amazing deal on some bus travel during my mid-semester break. By amazing I mean the "~40 hours of bus travel over 8 segments for NZD$50" kind of amazing. Looks like I'll be heading down to the South Island for two weeks in September. Details to follow.

Contact

Here's my contact information in Auckland:

Call or text me on +64 (022) 657 7182

You may have to dial 011 to dial internationally. Check your international text rates before you do so--texts are the same rate for me whether you call from the US or NZ.

Reach me by mail at:

Mike Wittman

International House Room #84

27 Whitaker Place

Auckland 1010

NEW ZEALAND

And you can Skype me at itsmikewittman.

Mt. Eden

One of my goals for today was to figure out how the bus system around here works (a story for another post). As I was riding around, this sign caught my attention from the bus window.

I had seen a picture of Mt. Eden on another blog, so I knew that it was an inactive volcano, but not much else about it. I hadn't been planning to climb to the summit, but I decided to jump off the bus and give it a go. Fortunately I had my camera with me.

Mt. Eden is the highest natural point in the Auckland area (or so says Wikipedia). It's more of a hill than a mountain, as it only reaches 200m above sea level. Yet it gives some of the best views of the Auckland CBD.

There's a winding circular path called Summit Road that leads to the top. It was a nice little walk, probably about 25 minutes or so until I reached the top. Mt. Eden is in a wooded area--a stark and welcome contrast from the city center. The views kept getting better as I walked higher.

The summit of Mt. Eden itself isn't particularly interesting. It's a cinder cone volcano, so the top is a grassy crater that's probably 200 feet deep. There's a little monument up there, and a bunch of tourists. Some buses carrying Japanese tourists passed me on the way up, and there were a few dozen passenger cars there as well. For reasons I don't fully understand, most of drivers of the cars were sitting in their vehicles in the parking lot with the seats reclined and their eyes closed. I don't know why you'd want to take a nap when there's such nice scenery around.

The tourists detracted from the serenity of the area, but it was still a beautiful park. This is the New Zealand that I had pictured in my mind's eye, and I haven't even left Auckland yet. I'm looking forward to what I'm going to see when I start traveling throughout the country.

Sky Tower

This is on my way to class every morning:

Voyage (Part 2 of 2)

This is the second of two posts detailing my trip to Auckland. If you haven't read the first part, scroll below this post to read it. This post was written after I arrived in Auckland on Tuesday, July 6th.

Since my Southwest flight was early, I spent a little over four hours in the gate area in LAX. My theater for most of that time was a group of American tourists who took most of the seats surrounding me in the gate. The group was made up of a mother, her two daughters and their husbands. They were going to Auckland to visit a woman who had stayed with the mother as a foreign exchange student some decades ago--it would be the first trip out of the country for most of them. They were a fun group to watch--especially during the frantic repacking and weighing of carry-on luggage after the Qantas lady made an announcement that carry-on weight was limited to 15 lbs. ("The travel agent never told us this!!"). Ironically, after all the fuss, my bag, along with most of those of the other passengers, was never weighed.

I also met a British girl who was traveling to NZ and Australia in a two-month break she had before she began a student teaching assignment in the UK. She was starting in Christchurch, on the South Island, and continuing to Australia later. She also whined to me about how Americans don't know how to queue correctly, which I think is the most stereotypically British complaint about the US, no matter how true it may be.

A quick shot of the midsection of the 747-400. I was sitting in the window four to the right of the second boarding door

The plane pulled up to the gate about an hour before takeoff, and an army of pilots and flight attendants boarded at that time. If you've never seen a 747 in person, it's hard to convey how massive it is. I'm used to dinky little regional jets flying the Baltimore-Boston route--seeing a jet that size reminded me once again how technologically amazing flying is. We queued for a while, then boarded. I had seat 49A, a window seat in the second of four larger sections of seats separated by either galleys or lavatories. As I had predicted earlier in the day, there was no one in the middle seat, which was a great relief. The aisle seat held a mid-fifties woman who was an Auckland native. She went to sleep for most of the flight and we interacted very little, except when I prodded her to get up so I could walk around or use the bathroom.

The flight itself was unlike any I've ever taken in so many ways. For one, the army of flight attendants. Heck, there was even a "Customer Service Manager" on board, a cheeky Australian named Adrian Bond who was capable of producing the most amazing fake smiles I've ever seen, turning from expressionless one moment to a toothy grin in the next as he asked "Hot chocolate or warm mint tea, love?" Of special note was the purser (the lead flight attendant in charge of preparing all the meals), an Asian-Australian in his sixties named Dennis Lam. My friends from home will appreciate how hilarious I found that.

After a lot of fussing about and taxiing, we took off around 12:20am PST. Movement is nearly imperceptible when you're flying in a 747--you definitely don't feel like you're aboard an aircraft. We climbed for no longer than 90 seconds before the Fasten Seatbelt sign came off (it never turned back on again at any point in the 12 hour flight), and people in middle seats scurried about to find a better seating assignment elsewhere.

This looked slightly better before I started tearing into it.

Also, Schweppes Australian ginger ale is darker, more gingery, and thus better than its American counterpart.

Qantas provided each seat with a pillow, fleece blanket, "comfort kit" of a eyemask, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a broken headset (at least mine was, the audio only came out of the right earpiece). I tried to get comfortable and get some sleep, but dinner service started pretty soon after takeoff. Since I had requested a special vegetarian meal, I actually got my food about 20 minutes before everyone else. The meal, which consisted of penne with cheese and marinara sauce, a roll, and a salad with lettuce, tomato, balsamic vinegarette, and some sort of buttery-tasting cheese, certainly wasn't inspired, but it hit the spot. I had been satiating my hunger with Ritz Chips and little snacks all day, it was nice to get a "full" meal. After everyone was served, the flight attendants came around offering tea, coffee, hot chocolate, and "hot mint tea," and then the cabin lights were turned off.

Transcontinental flights are a feat of endurance and stamina that I will fully admit I was not ready for. I'm a light sleeper anyway, and even though I was exhausted, I wasn't able to let myself easily fall asleep in that stiff chair. It was really cold in the cabin (hence the fleece blanket), and I started to envy the woman next to me who simply put on the eyeshade and conked out. I probably got a cumulative total of 3 hours of non-restful "sleep" over the 12 hour flight, most of it in increments of 15 minutes or so.

It was perpetually dark outside, and the concept of time started to slowly congeal. The flight attendants would walk by at regular intervals wearing halogen LED lapel pins and presenting cups of apple juice or pitchers of water as if they were offering them up for bids on the Price is Right, before disappearing into the bathroom to pour it all down the sink. I popped out my iPod at 3:30 am PST (or, if you like, 6:30 EST, or 7:30 PM NZST) and listened to some music, which didn't help me fall asleep either. After waking up from a micronap at 7:00, I decided "to heck with sleep" and stayed awake for the duration.

The rest of the flight was an exercise in patience. I sat, listened to music, looked out the window, sat, watched "Lost in Translation" in mono sound out of the right earpiece only, and waited some more.

Let's pretend this is blurry because I was being artistic, and not because I missed the shot...

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of darnkess, some lighter blue notes started to punctuate the night sky. The sun was starting to rise over Aoteroa, and it was finally time to land. Amazingly, after 12 hours of flight time and a half-an-hour late start, we landed at precisely the scheduled time on my itinerary.

I couldn't stop grinning as we were landing. This was the real New Zealand, not some vague idea or postcard. I had arrived. I had made it.

I passed through immigration and biosecurity without a hitch, and met up with Maarten, my contact from Univ. of Auckland, in the arrivals hall. His colleague, a fellow South African named Jung, took me and two other students through the rainy morning to our residence halls, from which I am typing this now. This was really only the start of my first day in Auckland, but I'll save those details for another post. Now, I'll just leave you with the nondescript view out my dorm room window, with promises of prettier pictures to come.

Certainly not Auckland's best view

Voyage (Part 1 of 2)

This the first of two posts detailing my trip to Auckland. This post was written at LAX on Sunday, July 4th

Not my plane...yet

The roar of the 777s taking off into the night sky shakes the gate windows here at LAX. It's amazing to see so many big planes together in one place. As we were taxiing after landing from Phoenix, I saw a couple of Qantas Airbus A380s parked in a maintenance hanger--it's very likely that I'll be flying one of those back to the US when this trip is over. Out the window right now I can see a LAN jet, likely bound for Santiago, and a Lufthansa A340 that's probably going to Frankfurt. An American 777 just left this gate for London, and now the next flight up is mine.

OK, enough plane geeking.

I'm here in LAX thanks to a Southwest flight from Manchester, NH, via Phoenix. Manchester might be an hour drive from me, but it reminded me why I love small airports. Instead of standing in stoic silence, the TSA Agent ("Agent Pitman") had a friendly conversation with me about New Zealand ("My kids did Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. You have to go to Fiji"). It was a 30-second walk to the gate area, and I watched the planes land for two hours before my flight boarded.

Me in MHT, ready to go

Manchester-Phoenix is the second longest flight in the Southwest system (Providence, RI-Las Vegas beats it out by a few miles), and the five-hour journey is unusual for an airline that built its business model on making short hops from city to city in the same region. The lenght of the flight seemed to throw my flight attendant for a loop, as she kept commenting how long we would be up in the air with typical Southwest humor ("That took forever! We appreciate being able to serve you all week here at Southwest"). Main flight attendant Linda seemed unsure of how to pass the time, so she spent it passing out all-you-can-eat snacks and refilling waters.

My seatmates were the Carlsons, Donald and Lorene, a pair of septua

genarians

who were on their way home to Indio, CA. They had been to New Zealand in the early 90s (it seems like everyone has been to New Zealand at some point) when they rented a camper van and drove the entire length of the country. I hope I'm going to be able to do the same over the next few months. We spent a few minutes talking and then they turned to their books and Sudoku and I to my iPod.

The Carlsons deplaned in Phoenix and boarded a flight to Ontario, CA. Since there were only two of us continuing on to LA, Linda let us get out of the plane and stretch our legs in the Phoenix terminal. Then, after a short while, it was back on the plane again and on with a short flight to LA.

The LA flight lacked the typical Southwest charm but made up for it with efficiency. The short flight was a relief after the 5-hour trek to Phoenix, and the flight attendants served a beverage (no can this time) and a small snack, picked it up, and then it was time to land. My rowmate was a woman who smelled of McDonalds and fell asleep immediately after takeoff. There was no one in the seat next to me.

LAX is a strange airport. In the span of 15 minutes, I saw the following:It

--From the window of an airport shuttle bus, the camera flashes of paparazzi at the Tom Bradley International Terminal. Unfortunately, my flight doesn't leave out of the central international terminal, so I wasn't able to get my glamour shot taken.

--At the security line, a girl dressed in a body-length green dinosaur costume.

--TSA Agent Forrest Hunt, an odd bird with full length scruffy sideburns (with armhair to match) who declared to me: "Thank you for traveling tonight, because it will allow me to pay my rent this month."

The sun has set here in Los Angeles. It's almost midnight eastern time, and I'm already exhausted even with a 12 hour flight to go. I've gone through a Tall Starbucks Tazo Passion Shaken Iced Tea Lemonade and one of Linda's leftover snack packs. Next stop, Auckland.

These seats would soon be filled by some interesting people...

Position and Hold

All the planning has come to this: my bags are packed, and I leave for Auckland in fewer than 24 hours.

The last week has been a mixture of uncomfortable down-time (my job ran out of things for me to do, so I've only worked for one day over the last two weeks) and rushing around to complete last-minute errands. Unfortunately, I had to replace several items I hadn't counted on. I stupidly sent my beloved iPod shuffle through the wash, and that model isn't made by Apple anymore. I unethusiastically had to upgrade to the newest generation iPod nano, and I still miss my shuffle. An broken or lost iPod is the worst kind of unexpected expense, but it was definitely a necessary one--especially before such a long trip.

Then, a few days ago, the volume gave out on the left earpiece of my equally-beloved Koss Portapro headphones. They're covered by a lifetime warranty, but there's no time to send away for that, and there's no place to buy them in person around here. Another unexpected yet equally necessary fee to replace them with a pair of Sennheisers further cut into my traveling budget.

Electrical equipment failures aside, I've spent most of this last week thinking about New Zealand with a sense of tangibility and concreteness that I had been missing before. I've started to wonder how challenging it will really be to live in NZ, interact with my classmates and floormates socially (What if no one likes me? What if I can't understand anyone? What if they can't understand me?), and the like. Typical pre-trip jitters, and stuff that really shouldn't be bothering me as much as it has, considering that I've already completed two years of school.

Packing was no picnic either. Qantas and Southwest both allow two checked bags, each of which can be no more than 50 lbs. They give you one carry-on item as well, but Qantas stipulates that it can be no heavier than 7 kilos (15 pounds). After a lot of rearranging and frustration, I've ended up condensing my life for the next 4.5 months into one 25" checked bag weighing 40 lbs and my carry-on backpack weighing 12 lbs. I wish I could have done better than that, but I'm only going to know what I didn't need to bring after I arrive. On my next international trip, whenever that may be, I hope to lighten my load by at least five pounds.

With everything packed, copies made of my passport and visa, and my parents ready to let me go, I'm ready to stop thinking about my trip and start living it. New Zealand, here we go.

Talk to you from Auckland.

Mike

(By the way, if anyone wants to Skype me at any time, my Skype username is itsmikewittman)