We have arrived!

Hello again, this time from New Zealand!!

After an overnight flight from LA last night, we arrived in Auckland, New Zealand early this morning. All in all, the dreaded "long" overnight flight was not that bad- you get a pretty comfy seat that comes equipped with its own private TV screen full of movies to choose from. After they feed you a meal, they dim the lights in the plane and most people try their best to fall asleep for the night. I was pretty successful in that, which has made all the difference today.

Want to know the craziest part? In all the traveling we have done over the past few days, we skipped Sunday! We left LA on a Saturday, and went over the international date line late last night, which means when we woke up it was Monday already! weird!

Anyway, once we arrived in Auckland this morning, we quickly went through customs, collected our bags, changed terminals, re-checked our bags, and hopped on an hour long flight to Napier, a town on the west coast of the north island. This is where we will be staying for two weeks. We were met at the airport by some of the staff from the schools we are working with, and found our way to the hotel we are staying at for the first few days of our stay.

While we are all exhausted, it is important to try to "trick" your mind into believing whatever time zone you are in, so we are all forcing ourselves to stay up until a 'normal' bedtime. Right now, it is 6:15pm in NZ and 2:15am in Vermont! In order to stay awake, we went and explored the town we are staying in today- had lunch, took a long walk, and went for a late afternoon visit to the beach. It is absolutely beautiful here, even though it is fall it was very sunny and there are tons of flowers and palm trees lining the streets. And the coast is amazing- huge cliffs overlooking the water! wow! Tomorrow starts our school visits, so hopefully we will be all acclimated and ready to go! We have students meeting us bright and early to bring us on a tour of their middle school!