Saturday night here in Auckland. Had a nice week here so far. Spent Monday and Tuesday resting mostly at the hostel, and then took a free bus tour of the city offered through the hostel, which was fun. Our first stop was the Sky Tower, a Space Needle-like building that's either the tallest or second tallest in the southern hemisphere (at 200m), and the tour guide gave away a free jump off of it, which I didn't win, unfortunately. The jump, which is a wire-assisted base jump with a maximum velocity of around 100km, normally costs about $200, which is a ghastly price to pay for a 200m jump when skydiving costs about the same. I met two nice Germans on the bus during lunch on Wednesday, and we joined up again on Thursday and Friday for day trips. On Thursday we took the ferry to Waiheke Island, which is a little smaller than Bainbridge but dedicated mostly to vineyards and summer homes, and walked around to a few of the beaches, ending back in Auckland in the evening. On Friday we took a different ferry over the Rangitoto, a volcanic island formed only 400 years ago. There is little development on the island and no infrastructure, so we ended up walking up to the top (a gorgeous view of the city), down the other side and around the shore back to the ferry dock, clocking about four and a half hours of hiking. The big news from yesterday was that Tevon started feeling sick and had to delay his flight to New Zealand by four days, so in the mean time I plan to travel on a bus up to the town of Paihia tomorrow, stay the night, come back in the evening on Monday, and meet up with Tevon Tuesday afternoon so we can bus down to the farm on Wednesday.

My first impressions of New Zealand are positive; people are generally kind and helpful, and there is a distinctive international feeling to the city of Auckland, even beyond the hostel. Pretty much every foreigner here speaks English, which makes a certain amount of sense, but it certainly brings attention in my mind to the severe lack of foreign language education in the United States. The German girl that I hiked around with was fluent in German, English, Spanish, French, and Flemish; and there I was, feeling pretty good about being conversational in Spanish. Sure showed me.