Extended first days report

This evening we take our time to sit in front of our laptops, sorting the pictures we took recently and writing down the latest impressions. It is the first time that my laptop runs longer than 10 minutes since we arrived here in Hamilton.

So, for now, I am trying to write a longer report of the last days.

Our first day in NZ was the 10th of February. We arrived at about 1 am at the Auckland airport, where we had to wait for our taxi until 5 in the morning. Time went by quite fast, as we found a free Internet terminal there. The taxi arrived on time, and it was our time to say goodbye to Reinhard. Hopefully he is doing fine in Wanganui, and courses don't stress him out too much.
The taxi driver was very friendly, and as we arrived in Hamilton, he gave us some initial info about the most important places in the city (city center, how to get to University..). Most of the houses in this area a very small. Bungalow-style flats, even the houses in the city center mostly don't have more than 2 floors. And they all look as if they would break apart in a second.

After we arrived at J's backpackers, we decided not to sleep in order to get into the "new" day rhythm. It worked quite well, even if the concentration was really bad. Couldn't recall everything I said this day.
Anyways.
We were at the Accomodation Office at 8:30, met our future landlord at 9, arranged to meet him again at 3 pm, went to the Computer Science department to confuse the people there, went shopping at TheWarehouse, managed to get some food there, wet to the backpacker's for cooking, ate, went back to the University region, talked with the landlord again and asked some final questions, agreed to move in the next day, went back to the Accomodation office to check some details about our future flatmates and went home with Rosina from the office, her son and his dog.
Then I was that tired that I hardly managed to brush my teeth. Slept from about 5-6pm until 7-8am. Had no watch really..

The best thing to have on the morning of the 11th: shower.

We went into town then, to get our phone numbers and the money for the rent. I wanted to buy sunscreen at the Body Shop, but they did not have any there. Strange.
But: they have quite a lot of so-called Health Stores, and there I could decide between Weleda and Dr. Hauschka sunscreen. Felt like at home ;-)
So I succeeded to get the sun protection. Failed in buying bread though. If you should ever come to New Zealand and read the word "bakery", don't expect to get bread. If you find bread, don't expect it to taste like REAL bread. Have written that already I guess :-)

Back at the backpackers, we called a taxi to bring all our stuff to our new home. Gave both taxi driver and Alex a big laugh as I tried to sit on the right side. Right side = wrong side. Left side = right side. Strange kiwis..

There we were. At OUR house. On the second day in NZ. We were very enthousiastic at the beginning, but quickly realized that we had to do a lot of cleaning. We did a lot on the first day. Did the laundry to have fresh blanketes and sheets, vaccumed our rooms..
2 days later we are still not finished with all the cleaning. Kitchen and living room not finished yet..

Sunday evening we were invited for BBQ at the landlord's house. It was a family gathering. The two sons were there with their wifes(-to-be), and even one father-in-law. I had brought vegan sausages, and they had a lot of salad, so it was not too bad for me from the nutrition perspective (even if I normally avoid BBQ's if it is possible - they make me sad). The evening was quite funny - and strange. We did karaoke-singing and Alex joined their capitals-guessing game. The landlord is a weired person. He loudly speaks about the big breasts of his daughter-in-law, he calls his woman a good breeding-machine, and simply throws half of his salad into the grass behind him. Hopefully that's not typical kiwi.
It was a nice evening though, even if my brain was full of weired stories and happenings afterwards..

Today I woke up at about 9 when the sun started shining onto my bed. The jalousies (or however you use this word in English) were closed, but still the sun managed to find its way through to my face. Nice though..
Full of energy, I decided to clean our oven. In order to bake bread we had to do that sooner or later (baking without cleaning would be like suicide..).
At 11 we had a meeting at the University, where they showed us the speech editing software they had written, a quite nice tool, but unfortunately built upon Microsoft's speech recognition software ;-)
We'll probably work on that project this semester, we might decide on that at the end of this week.
In the afternoon I finally tried the bread-baking thing, and it went quite ok. Have to get used to the oven, and probably have to get better flour..
I failed on making "Gröstel" though. Stupid white NZ potatoes.

By the way: stupid NZ water. Smells and tastes like swimming pools.