Ah, the life of a beagle...

Here we sit, safe and sound in Auckland. I must say that the trip from Montana to NZ was much more pleasant than we expected. I thought we would have to roll ourselves out of the plane and drink coffee all day to stay awake, but we felt energetic enough upon finding a B&B to hike up Mt. Eden (more on this in another posting).

The actual flight from the US to NZ was fantastic! At twelve and a half hours the flight was much shorter than we expected. Not that we would have minded a few extra hours. Each seat had its own TV screen with a full menu of movies, TV shows, and video games. It was pretty nice to have the option of watching a few episodes of The Simpsons instead of the latest Legally Blonde nightmare. The seats were even nice enough to afford both Peter and I a good 7 hours of sleep. I only hope that future Air New Zealand flights will go as smoothly.

I must say that the customs folks in NZ are much more pleasant to deal with. Of course they’re picky about environmental protection, but they were all very amiable and easy to work with. I mean, who would mind having their bag sniffed by a beagle? How about a friendly black lab? One of the dogs was lucky enough to find a bag with beef jerky in it (which you can’t bring into the country) so the customs people gave him a bite before carting it away. Ah, the life of a security dog.

All in all we’ve felt very welcomed and appreciated here so far. People are glad to answer the silly questions we yanks ask, like Are we supposed to tip wait staff? and Will this bus take us back to the Mt. Eden neighbourhood? They’ve gone out of their way to make sure we feel comfortable with the new customs (it’ll take us a while before we feel ok with the whole no-tipping thing). I like being able to ask questions without feeling silly about it.

Kiwi language lesson #1: A cell phone is called a mobile (pronounced mo-bile), while a gas station is called a mobile (pronounced mo-bl). I guess it’s all in the accent. More language lessons to follow for all you linguaphiles out there.