The top of our building, St. James Apartments, has a rooftop deck. The deck comes equiped with a large grill, chairs, plants, sauna, and a view into downtown. The other night we had some friends over to grill and spend the evening hanging out on our rooftop patio.

Internet Update: No internet yet. Hopefully sometime in the next month. Telecom (the goverment owned phone/internet/everything company) had to reschedule our install date.

Telecom is also one of only two providers of mobile phone service in NZ. Becuase there are only two providers, and one is goverment owned, there is no real competition and prices are rediculous. Beth has a prepayed phone from Vodafone, the other provider. She pays 81c/minute to place any type of call. Most people here text instead, which costs 20c/text. Calling mobile phones from landlines is also expensive, costing something like $1.30/min. In short, Telecom is the enemy. But at the same time, they will be providing me with an internet connection.

Saturday morning we woke up early and caught the first (9:15am) ferry to Rangitoto. Rangitoto is a volcanic island not far from Auckland city. Rangitoto is the most recently formed volcano in the Auckland Volcanic field. It was formed from an eruption only six-hundred years ago. The entire island is volcanic rock. The black lava looks like plowed fields.

We walked to the summit (260m up) and around the crater rim. We ate lunch at the top – leftover sushi we had made the night before. We then walked down another side of the volcano to a beach, and then around the island to pick up the last ferry back at 5pm.

By the time we got back to Auckland everyone was exausted. We ate some Asian food at one of the many food courts, went home, and fell immediately asleep.

Note: I am writing this from one of the three internet cafes within 50m of our apartment. The internet cafes are filled with Koreans seemingly 24 hours a day playing Warcraft and other games.

Mission Bay is located just a few km east of downtown Auckland. Accross the bay you can see Rangitoto, one of Auckland’s many vocalnic peaks.

We caught a bus from Britomart (transportation center) and were there in a few minutes. We spent the day on the beach, in the water, and eating fish and chips at one of the shops lining the beach. By we I mean Bethany, Julia, our friend Andy from Germany, our friend Rand from South Africa, some Frenchie, and myself.

The water seemed quite warm, considering we are just coming out of winter. I rescued a starfish that had washed onto some rocks.

We moved out of the Brown Kiwi and into our own apartment in downtown Auckland. The search for a place had been a bit difficult. Every apartment we looked at was extremely small and felt like a cubicle. At last we saw an ad for a roomy place in an old building downtown. We knew we wanted it imediately and were pleased to found out that the landlords found us to be suitable tenants.

We moved in yesterday, and I have spent this morning getting all the utilities turned on. We are located right accross the street from Albert Park and the art museum. We are also convieniently located near Britomart, the main transportation center, and Queen Street, the main street downtown. We are also near Auckland Domain, a beautiful park where we spent this afternoon.

Our building was built in the early 1900’s and was originally a YMCA building. It was converted into apartments in the early nineties. The building has four levels with a rooftop deck with saunda and grill. From the rooftop you can see the very top of the skytower, which is about two blocks away.

WE SHOULD HAVE AN INTERNET CONNECTION EARLY NEXT WEEK!

Yesterday Julia, Beth, and I went with some friends to the harbor, which is the northern part of downtown Auckland. (I will put up a map of Auckland and its regions one of these days.) We walked west along the harbor until we found the Auckland Fish Market. We shopped for quite some time, checking out all the different types of fish on display. We learned that shark is called “yellow fish”.

We eventually decided on mussels, squid, baby octopus, and prawns (shrimp), and cooked them for dinner in a chili sauce over noodles. Very good.

For more on the Auckland Fish Market, click here.

An interesting note about time zones:
I have been quite confused about the time differences since leaving home. When we left the US, there was a 16 hour difference (8 hours earler in NZ and a day later) in time between EST and NZ time. While we were in Tahiti, NZ observed daylight savings time. Because it is spring in the southern hemisphere, NZ sprang forward an hour resulting in a 17 hour time difference (7 hours earlier in NZ and a day later).

Now the US has observed daylight savings time by falling backwards an hour because they are entering autumn. This results in an 18 hour time difference (only 6 hours earlier in NZ and a day later).

This was quite confusing to think about at first, but as it turns out NZ is 8 hours earlier (and a day later) when not observing daylight savings time, and only 6 hours earlier (and a day later) when both are observing DST. Or perhaps I have that backwards.