I made it

Now writing from New Zealand (please note, times shown on this blog are for the UK). I arrived this morning (Thu 8 Dec 05) at Auckland International (AKL) airport; the plane touched down around 5.25am local time. My parents and I left Canterbury at about 8am on Tue 6 Dec 05 and my plane left London Heathrow (LHR) at the expected 14.35 (well, actually 10 min later than expected). We then had a 10 hour flight to Los Angeles (LAX) where they made us go through USoA Customs and we had to sign a rights waiver saying that we won’t argue if they choose to deport us – even though we never left the airport, nor the international transit area. On arrival in AKL my carry-on bag was searched because a search dog thought there was something in there. I explained that there was an apple, but I’d eaten it during the flight. Then I got my bags (took ages) and went through to get them scanned. They wanted to look inside them because of the wax crystals and took a bag away to get it tested. Of course it came back clean, but the official who opened my bag refused to repack it for me – even after I asked him before he started and he said it’d be ok. I’m now near Auckland and will be heading down to Taupo for the night at about 4pm. Matt will be there so I’ll get to see him, which will be nice. We’re planning to arrive in time for tea. Well that’s all I know for the moment. We intend on going to Hawkes Bay the next day where I’ll stay a night with Grandma and Joy’ll come get me on Saturday.

Oh yeah, on another note: I haven’t got a SIM card yet. I went in to Vodafone and asked about them, then went to Telecom and apparently they don’t do SIM cards. The guy said “well you won’t find a SIM card in a Telecom shop since Telecom phones don’t use them.”