Sheep dots, strange accents and storms
A remote hi from the Kiwi land! Here I am, finally. And here’s my blog, finally. Like most of you already know, it’s been my dream for many years to go to New Zealand, and now the case is that I’ve been to the exact country for about three weeks. The time feels much longer, however, so I guess I’ve managed to settle in pretty well. No wonder when the landscapes are this beautiful and people so nice. Also, I didn’t travel here alone. My friend Timo came along, which has probably made it easier to settle in, too. The fact is that I’ve never been this far from home or even travelled a lot before, and our intention is to stay for 9 months… Why to leave too soon once you’re here!
In this blog I’m going to write more about my feelings and some random details of the trip rather than report everything we’ve done here. As a very non-mathematical person, I find it more natural and interesting not to be too organized and just to describe my thoughts about my new kiwi life. I chose to write the blog in English mainly for the simple reason that it’s the language I need to use here. Of course I also want to provide my international friends with the same stories as the Finns. However, I’ll try not to be such a grammar cop that I usually am. Otherwise I’ll never be able to finish a text. This is the attitude I have to adopt in NZ in general, too. So please, all, don’t remember I’m an English translation student while you’re reading the blog… Thanks.
In case you don’t know what we’re actually doing here: we’re having a Working Holiday. At the moment, it means that we’re desperately trying to find our first jobs. We’d like to get youth work -related jobs, but it’s starting to seem that anything’ll have to do. We’ve made numerous phone calls and we’ve been trying to understand the gorgeous kiwi accent. I seriously mean the accent’s gorgeous, but it doesn’t always feel that gorgeous to struggle with the misunderstandings. In the end, it’s good fun, though.
Receptionist: “Have you got a peeen?” Me: “Sorry?” (Pin? What pin?) R: Have you got a pencil with you?” Me: *facepalm*
Before I tell you what we’ve been doing in addition to job searching, I’ll tell a little about the approximately 40-hour flight journey we had to go through in order to get to the country. For me flying was still exotic at the beginning of the journey, but I guess extra glamour was pretty much gone after the 40 hours. The route was Helsinki – Brussels – Abu Dhabi – Sydney – Auckland. The most interesting landing was certainly in Abu Dhabi where you could watch the dry, yellowish landscape through the airport windows, listening to cute-sounding Arabic spoken by locals.
The 14-hour flight from Abu Dhabi to Sydney was also quite an experience itself. Sleeping, eating, watching films, some more sleeping and maybe even a bit more eating. More than soon you didn’t have a clue of what time or day it was anymore. When the final flight departed, excitement grew again, but it was surely accompanied with a creepily dizzy feeling. During the landing, I smiled at myself and thought: “This is it!” The landscapes from up in the air were astonishing. Green hills and trees, and small white (and some black) sheep dots on fields. The first impression was just as good as I thought it’d be. Never mind the huge jet lag. We were welcomed to NZ by our new friends Milla, Vilho and Markku who drove us to our first accommodation, the house of an originally English couple. We can stay at Peter and Patricia’s place for as long as we want, which we appreciate very much. The weather was extremely stormy for almost two first weeks, but at least we were able to concentrate on making ourselves home in the house very well.
Having been here in Auckland for about three weeks now, we’ve also had time to do other things than job searching. We’ve visited the city centre’s second-hand stores, Sky Tower (had a delicious à la carte buffet lunch feat. marine dishes up there) and Mt Eden, tramped on Long Bay Beach and Browns Bay, cycled to Albany Mall to do some shopping, been at a party next door, tried tandem cycling and tasted local beer and wine (NZ is a significant wine country, I’ll have to try to start liking wines…). I could write more about these activities, but I think there will be enough of new ones coming. So, right now I’ll just welcome you to read my blog in the future, too! It’s time for me to go to watch a film and eat chips and start preparing for tomorrow’s phoning marathon. Oh, and it’s 1.35am at the moment. I’d better get a job if I want to get to a normal day rhythm! Or do I even? A hardened student as I am.