Getting here...and settling in!

I left on Monday the 4th of January...my journey began in Phoenix when my parents dropped me off at the airport about 6:30 AM. From there I flew to San Diego, where we had a stop and new people got on and then I flew to San Francisco. I was thinking about going out and seeing part of San Francisco for a few hours because we had so much time in between, but that didn't work out, partly because I didn't plan very well and partly because it cost like $20 to leave your bag somewhere. I found a friend while waiting for my bag (luckily) so I waited for her to get her bag and then we went to find out where we were supposed to go and if we could check in to our flight yet. We (Stacey and I) found out that Air New Zealand didn't open until 3:30 so we couldn't do anything but wait so we went to the international air part of the airport and we settled into a table and waited. She made some phone calls, I watched some Vampire Diaries...it was oh so exciting as we waited for like 4 hours. A few hours after we got there another girl joined us and we just chatted while we waited for the last like half hour. A little before they opened we went and got in line so that we could be some of the first through and it didn't take us too long to get through the line, and then to get through security. Once we made it past security we found a big group of girls on the other side, so we had our own little section of the waiting area, and that is what we did a little more of...wait. We could see the plane we would be taking right on the other side of the glass, and we kept getting more and more excited about how soon we would actually be able to get on it.

My roommates and I getting ready to get on the plane in San Francisco!

Our plane started loading about 6:15 PM so like 12 hours after my journey began I was finally starting the longest part of the journey...my 13 hour plane ride! We left on time (7 PM) and as we got started we were privileged to watch the Air New Zealand safety video...it was great, if you haven't seen it, I would recommend you look it up, it will give you a good laugh. I watched like 4 movies and slept a lot on the way here, ate some pretty yummy food considering it was airplane food, and 12 hours later we were getting ready to land (an hour early!). Once we landed we waited for our bags for a while, so we took advantage of that time and took some pictures with the greeting committee...aka some of the members of the All Blacks rugby team, one of the prides of New Zealand.

With the All Blacks

After getting our luggage and making it into New Zealand officially we waited a little more for our families to get to the airport. Ramona (our professor) met us there as well, but since we got there so early it took a while for everyone to get there. Our "dad" Erin got there to take us home and we were so excited, it was a bit of a drive to get to our home, but it was lovely to see all of the beautiful green scenery! We asked him a little about the family and the living situation...I don't know how much I really remembered from that conversation because I was really tired, after 12 hours on a plane, and considering that it was 5:30 AM (on Wednesday) local time and it had just been a long day! We got to our house and into our room and started unpacking. No one was awake yet so once we finished unpacking we went back to sleep for a bit.

Because no one was very quick to volunteer for the top bunk I took it...it has been loads of fun getting up on that so far! I spend a lot of my time on one of the other girls' beds instead though! Especially if we are all doing homework or working on our computers.

Our closet area all organized and clean...it doesn't look quite as clean now, but it is still pretty nice, there is a lot of shelf space, which is great for 3 girls!

I don't have pictures from the next few days because I stink at taking pictures, and because a lot of the other girls have them on their cameras and I haven't been able to get them from them. Since I would have to download them on my computer I don't know how many other pictures I will get for a while because we don't have a lot of internet to share. I'll leave you for now with this, and I promise I'll get more on here soon! It is hard to focus on this when there are little ones running in and out of your room playing with your stuff and trying their hardest to distract you! But it is a lot of fun and I am really enjoying the experience of being a kind of big sister to so many! (There are 8 of us total and I am the oldest of the whole bunch by like 8 months I think) Mostly I feel like I am an older sister to like 4 of them, but basically there are a lot of girls around here! It is nice though because it feels like home!

I love you all, thanks for the continued support and love! I love hearing from everyone and getting comments! I promise I'll work on more exciting posts and I'll work on getting more pictures soon! Love you loads, or heaps as they say here in NZ!