Falling in Love with Auckland

(This was written a week ago. I've been so busy at the client and running around NZ that I haven't had time to post.)

Wow, what a weekend. It was amazing, crazy, shocking, beautiful, peaceful, warm, and loving. Yes, that many adjectives in one weekend. So let's start with the actual week. It's was my first week on the actual client. My co-workers explained the client as the NZ equivalent of a US credit union. They're a huge company, but they have our audit team in a conference room that is as big as my room at college. There are 5 of us working in this room. Really tight quarters. It's a really good thing I get along with the people on my team. I'm in the corner and if I need to get out I practically have to climb over my teammates. And one side of our conference room is glass. One time I was trying to slide behind my in-charge and I gave the people at the client a very nice view of my bum pushed against the glass. So classy. You can view the miniscule space I work in below.
My team is really fun to work with because it's really diverse. My in-charge, Reka, is Hungarian (blonde hair, black and red sweater) and has told me a bit about life during the cold war in Hungary. Linda, the G3 (third year) is from Vietnam and is dating a boy from Russia. Tijana, the G1 on the client is from Croatia. She has a ton of crazy stories from everything that went down between Croatia and Serbia. Tim, aka The Wolf, is the only Kiwi I work with on a regular basis. He's teaching me all the fun Kiwi lingo and the cultural difference between NZ and the US.

Linda and Tim have to go to Christchurch next week to do some audit work down there. Linda's freaking out because of the tremors that happened about a month ago after the initial earthquake. Tim was talking about how he's not going to put the latch on hid hotel room door in case there's another quake or tremor so he can get out quickly. Oh the exciting world of accounting.

Friday night was... an adventure. First of all, Friday was the big "chip in for Christchurhc". Everyone in NZ wore black and red and did something to help people in Christchurch. My firm had a mixer where we recorded a message for our coworkers in Christchurch. Then Claire, Renae, a few Kiwis and I went to see the Warriors take on the Bulldogs in Rugby. It was really fun. Thankfully one of the G1s brought me a ski jacket so I wasn't freezing. This G1 was also the guy who gave me a USB with heaps of Kiwi music on it. Awesome. It's a really good thing we had covered seating because it started POURING part-way through the game. And of course the players kept going like nothing had happened. It didn't phase them at all.


After the game we met up with a bunch of G1s from the office. Ok, let me tell you - Kiwis drink like fish. I'm pretty sure they could give any Irish person a run for their money. They were all smashed before we even went out. Yeah, in a nut shell I've never been more grateful for my BYU College experience in my life.

Moving on, Saturday we woke up to a BEAUTIFUL day. It was amazing outside. We got up and ran out to mission bay and back. (Google Mission Bay - It's amazing) I ran about 6-7 miles and Claire did about 10. It was amazing, but Claire screwed up her foot and I totally killed my knee. We make quite the crippled pair.

After we showered we got ready and went to the skytower. It was AMAZING. It would've made my mom freak out because it was so high! It's the highest building in the southern hemisphere.

After the skytower we tried to go to Newmarket where I work everyday to get some cupcakes that my team introduced me to. I hate frosting, but I LOVE these cupcakes. I'd seriously eat their frosting with a spoon. Anyway, we learned that everything in NZ closes at 5pm - which is the time we got to Newmarket. Yeah, awesome. After walking around Newmarket we decided to test my sense of direction and attempt to find Parnell St. to get something to eat. Anyone who knows me knows that was a bad idea. We ended up having to call Renae and have her pick us up at a random Caltex (petrol station) in another town. We would seriously not be able to survive without Renae. But if you think about it - getting lost only once in 2 weeks is pretty good.

Anyway, Renae dropped us off back in the city. We went and got Thai food at this little hole-in-the-wall place that was recommended to us and it was SO GOOD! Then we decided to splurge and get a really nice dessert at a restaurant overlooking the city. It was really beautiful. It was one of those moments where Claire and I looked at each other and said, "Oh my gosh, we're in New Zealand!"

This morning Renae drove me out to the Hamilton Temple. It was so cool to be at a place where my Dad was when he was on his mission. I also go to see the LDS College where Dad played basketball against the NZ teams. It's so surreal to see places I've been dearing about from my dad my whole life.

I was able to attend church today which was so wonderful. I seriously needed that. One of Dad's companion's families have totally taken me under their wing. I'm now attending FHE with them, going Visiting Teaching with their niece, going to their daughter's birthday party, and am now singing in the choir at a musical fireside with them next Sunday. At choir pratice today they introduced me to everyone as their daughter. It's so nice to feel like I have family here. Plus, everyone in the ward wants to take me places, give me rides, etc.

The first week Claire and I went to bed at 7:30 every night because of the jet lag and had no social life outside of work. Now, we don't know how we're going to eat all our food that we have in our apartment because we have someone who wants to take us to dinner almost every night this week. We've finally settled in and we only have two weeks left. It's surreal.

I'm totally in love with this place.