Surprisingly the 34 hours it took to get here wasn't so bad. Our flight left from JFK on Tuesday, February 9 and arrived in Christchurch on Thursday, February 11. Everything went very smooth and we didn't have to wait more 20 minutes in any security line. The only hassle was my thumb which I had sprained 3 days before leaving, so ripping all my electronics out of my overstuffed carry on a bunch of different times was quite a pain and it was really hurting throughout the flight. From JFK we "hopped off a plane at LAX with a dream and a cardigan" (sorry, I had to do that), which surprisingly was quite empty, where we had dinner and I had my last opportunity to have a legal drink in the states before arriving in NZ where the drinking age is 18. Thankfully on all the flights I was seated next to Julie, one of the girls from Geneseo who I was traveling with, which was especially nice on the looonngggg flight to Auckland so I could fall asleep and not worry about knocking into a stranger on both sides. Air Zealand was actually a really sweet company to fly with and made the long journey quite bearable. Every seat had a tv screen with hundreds of up to date music artists from around the world (I enjoyed discovering some kiwi bands) and probably 100 new movies and a bunch of tv shows ( I watched some shows on exploring the Christchurch and Canterbury region). But mostly I slept which shocked me since I usually can never sleep on planes. I was woken up at around 2 or 3am local time due to some extreme turbulence which actually happened when we were flying right over the pacific islands. For all you LOST fans out there, Julie and I had been joking about Oceanic 815 the whole way over and when that happened we both were like ahh it's the island! it was pretty funny. And when i talked to my dad the next day, he said he had been tracking my flight and around the same area the pilot turned the tracking off and dad was freaking out and when he found the plane again it had taken a 90 degree turn and was headed for south america...weird right? Anyway we made it safely to Auckland on the North Island after being in a plane for 12 hours and experiencing about 20 hours or so of darkness since we wre flying away from the sun. When we got to Auckland it was so nice and sunny and tropical feeling, it kinda reminded us of Florida. After waiting around for 3 hours and attempting to freshen up in the bathroom we hopped on a plane to Christchurch where we first watched the most hilarious air safety video ever, the kiwis (btw new zealanders are called kiwis) were so funny (wayyyy better than any required safety video i've seen back home) that i actually watched the whole thing. We also sat next to a man who had been to NY before and in our conversation made some conversation about how gross NJ is...funny that even on the other side of the world people have the same opinions about dirty jersey. Anyway the hour and a half flight was absolutely beautiful-all the water we flew over was a pretty teal and tourquoise color, it was hard to tell the water from the sky. As we got closer to Christchurch (from now on I'll refer to it as ChCh) it became cloudier and when we landed it was raining. Right away we were greeted by our taxi driver who was very friendly and fun and of course had to say something that totally fit the American stereotype when we passed 2 MacDonalds in the foodcourt. Forgetting that Kiwis drive on the other side of the road, when we got to the taxi one of us went to get in the drivers side of the car which of course the driver made fun of us for. After a crazy drive (on the left hand side of the road-going around roundabouts was terrifying)we reached our final destination: THE UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY, CHRISTCHURCH NZ.
