Enroute

<p>I'm writing this from my window seat overlooking the vastness of the pacific ocean high above the clouds, close to the stars. We're still 5h44 from Auckland, and it's 32min into Feb 4th, according to the local time displayed in the NZ Airshow on my seat console. I won't get to see much of Feb 4th this year, well fly over the international date line shortly. It's worse for the woman in the seat in front of me though. Feb 4th is her birthday!<br>
Air New Zealand has the coolest safety video I've ever seen, and it's no wonder they won Airline of the year last year. The staff make air Canada staff seem like grumpy unfun people, and I'm not just saying that because the booze is free! (I only had 2 glasses of wine...) The food wasn't as good as South African Air; the beef curry I had was decent for plane food. <br>
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At this point my nervousness has been taken over by excitement, save for the tea gifted to me that I fear won't make it past customs. That's making me nervous, but I suppose there's nothing I can do but hope...</p>
<p>The entire plane appears to be passed out at this time, it's 2h44 Vancouver time (I think that's Van time...) but it's only about 11h45 in Auckland, so still time to party! </p>
<p>I'm excited to get there, but I feel like I have a long ever growing list of things I need to take care of when I land: find an appartment, open a bank account, book my hotel and flight to Wellington where I start my Contiki tour on Friday, get my courses settled, find my way around, set up my cellphone. I'm not sure if giving the list form eases my kind or stresses me out; at least I'll be less likely to forget something<br>
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Public Service Announcement: I'm writing this on my phone and the silly thing keeps getting confused and thinking that I'm writing in HTML so if there are random numbers/letters/symbols I apologize, and please ignore! (same goes for funkily autocorrected words...) PSA OUT.

When we first boarded you could smell TERRIBLE BO coming from someone near by, but this has subsided. Now we get occasional wifs of Axe or something like a lemongrass air sterilizer, or a wiff of feet which isn't bad in comparison...

The console in front of me also displays that we are currently flying at mach 0.83 (just a fancy lil tide bit for all you nerds!) we're now 5h05 from Auckland and Im going to go back to sleeping/reading Game of Thrones/ watching the stars go by. 

G'night
Laura.

Ps. I kinda wish I could "check in" facebook style or something just to say that I'm somewhere random over the pacific, but of course there are no interwebs here. Alas, I must wait till we land. (so of course the time info I provided herein will be moot at that point...)

PPS. We've passed over the Equator now, but not yet the date line. It's still Feb 4th!