I have finally got an internet connection again that will let me sign in to websites and I have some time to spare so I thought I would do a holiday update this time from New Zealand.

The long flight I mentioned in my previous post was, in fact, long as I predicted and also kinda confusing because we crossed the international date line and lost a day somewhere so even though the flight was about 12 hours long we left at about 10pm on the 9th of July and arrived at around 6am on the 11th which was odd to say the least. This bizarre jet lag isn't helped by New Zealand being GMT +12.00 so despite the 8 days in America and two different time zones I think my body still yearns for British Summer Time which it sadly left behind in Manchester. But I do think I have a one up on the rest of my family in that I can pretty much sleep anywhere if I'm really tired which meant that although the plane was kinda cold and uncomfortable I got about 9 hours sleep on it (give or take about 45 minutes I think) so when they were knackered the next day I felt pretty much fine.

Another bizarre thing about New Zealand is that it's the middle of winter and although it isn't freezing (it's barely even cold by British standards) it's very odd to come from the hot and sunny Californian Coast to this. New Zealand is opposite country!

New Zealand, once you get past the opposite land stuff, is a lovely place. The people are friendly and the landscape is beautiful, it actually kinda looks like Scotland, if there were more tree ferns in Scotland, and it was warmer, and there were more cows (seriously I've seen so many cows here there are supposed to be more sheep than people on New Zealand, although that is according to my Father so he may be exaggerating, but I have only seen about 3 fields of sheep and more than I can count of cows), the rain is about the same though.

I think it says something about my family that a rainy day-out on holiday where we sit and have a picnic in the car, in a car park looking out into fog says holiday more than sun and sand, well i tell a lie sand says holiday but it was rarely sunny and it was even rarer for it to be warm but we'd be in the sea anyway because we're that kinda of people.

Another good thing about New Zealand is that it has some really nice public toilets they're clean and even stylish and to top it all of they're free. There's one set in a town I think was called Kawakawa that had been design by Hundertwasser and were signposted off the main road.

Also there are loads of really nice looking buildings here most of which have stunning views as well. It seems like most of the buildings are quite new and all have big windows for view admiring, but I don't think I could live here even for the views because things seem to take a while to get here like the first episode of boosh season 3 was on last tuesday! But I can forgive New Zealand that because our apartment is very nice and has a washing machine which was very handy.

Because of the time we spend travelling I have a handful of reasonably thick books around to keep me occupied during flights or when there is little to do and one of the books I brought was utterly rubbish it's called Rule of Four and so badly written I had to skim it and every so often rant to Helen about its rubbishness (which she found incredibly annoying which was also a bonus) and I ditched this one asap and spent the next few days reading Making Money and Going Postal (in that order for some reason, it was alright because I've read Going Postal before but it seems counter-intuitive now) and now I've started on some John Grisham stuff (how I do love my police procedural...) and I've read one of his books before and vaguely remembered it as being pretty good and I wondered why I hadn't read anymore. Well, by the time I was half way through The Last Juror I could see why it was sooo slow and boring and the narrator was really kind of annoying and I'm still not entirely sure why it's called The Last Juror because there were still about six of them left at the end of the book and they certainly weren't the last group of people to ever be jurors so perhaps that is a nuance of the story that is lost on me.

Oh and before I forget, I find myself developing a strange liking for Miley Cyrus. I think it's safest to say that she really does have a good voice and I blame Helen for watching the Disney Channel in the Hotel rooms when I was asleep, yup that's the only possibly explanation...

It's unlikely that I'll post anymore before I get to Melbourne and mooch there for a couple of days mostly because we haven't really done all that much in Auckland but drive about looking at beaches and getting McDonald's drive thru cups of tea (which have yet to be served correctly through one of those radio order thingys, once the guy thought my Dad had ordered trees...) oh and a wet and windy boat tour of the Bay of Islands, the least imaginative name for a bay full of islands in the universe in my opinion thank you Captain Cook! But it was kinda cool because the boat (which was not small) went through this arch in an Island it was pretty cool :-D