After the misery of ground-school the week had finally arrived when I would board a flight to New Zealand in order to start the flying phase. Given it'll be winter for part of my stay I had to pack warmer clothes which inevitably were quite heavy, but after a lot of shuffling I managed to get both bags below the magic 30kg limit. My flight case was however a tad heavy at 9kg, but the nice lady at check-in was quite understanding and let me off without charge! So after sadly saying goodbye to a certain person at home then a meal with my parents at Heathrow, I disappeared through security and met up with my travelling companions. Naturally we met in the bar, but no sooner were we there and it was time to find our gate.
Luckily we were travelling on the A380. Unluckily we were travelling on it to the other side of the globe, which took 26 hours, and involved a 13 hour time zone adjustment (which i'm yet to catch up with!). The food was good, the entertainment vast and the transfers (one in Dubai and one in Melbourne) both fairly straight forward, so all in all a pretty good trip.
We arrived at Clearways on Friday at 6pm local time, and were met with blue skies and temperatures of 23 degrees; not at all bad for Autumn, so hopefully it lasts a bit and I may get some sort of summer this year! I have been accommodated in Trident which is one of the original blocks built here, so have my own kitchenette and bathroom, as well as the large main kitchen. The two gyms here are also pretty good so Alice will be pleased ill not return in August as the human blob :-)
We were given the weekend off so went into town for a few beers yesterday, then 5 of us went kayaking today about 20 miles away. Amazingly we hired the kayaks for 4 hours for the princely sum of 20 dollars.......about 10 pounds! I am however now completely knackered so should sleep soundly tonight ahead of my first day at the airport tomorrow. Yes i'm missing people, but at least i'm here and underway in what I can honestly call the most beautiful country I've ever seen.
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