First days in New Zealand

Here I am, nestled at the bottom of the world, living in the future. It's blustery, cold, and generally quaint. This, I gather, is New Zealand in a nutshell.

New Zealand observes daylight saving time, which gives me the curious pleasure of being in the future, relative to anyone I care to talk to online. Right now I'm at UTC+13, which means I'm 20 hours ahead of those back home in San Diego. Effectively, it's tomorrow.

The hostel in which I am currently staying is, by far, the most backpacker-centric locale I have yet witnessed: It is ten storeys, with an STA Travel agency for students located on the eighth storey. The third storey is home to two TV rooms, a vast number of washers and dryers, a massive kitchen, an array of perhaps fifteen couches, another travel agency, an Internet Cafe, and a job board. There's a pub on the fourth floor, but I have it on good authority that it's not very good.

The room would be alright, except for two things: First, my roommates are definitely night owls. It's after 1pm now, and the other three are still asleep. This may be in part due to the second problem, that being that the room is located in the middle of the building, and is thus cut off from natural light. I feel almost like I'm in one of the cave experiments from the 60s. Not an ideal way to overcome jetlag.

At the airport, I picked up a brochure on Auckland tourist attractions. Sunday I went to the Maritime Museum, which overall was very interesting. Unfortunately, due to the weather I was unable to go on the tiny steamboat that was supposed to be running.

There is a park here called, and I am not making this up, Sheep World. I think it's a farm, but at the moment they also have a scarecrow exhibit. I'm not sure if I will actually make it to this wonderfully-named site, as it's a ways' ride out of town, but know that it exists.