Interesting Roommates

Hello everyone! It's almost 10am on Saturday morning here in Auckland. I arrived yesterday afternoon and took a shuttle to the hostel. The hostel is in this fabulous suburb of the city called "Parnell." It's so cute with all of the cafes and fabulous restaurants and shops! I am probably going to have leave just so that I don't spend all my money here! I walked by a restaurant last night that smelled like mussels/clams simmering in garlic and wine and I almost fainted, it smelled so good!

After I checked in to the hostel, which is another old house on a quiet street, I left to find food and some necessessities like shampoo and a SIM card for my phone. I walked all the way down and into the city, stopping to eat the biggest chicken burger I have ever had! It had spring greens, brie, pears, aioli sauce and a sweet relish...yum!!! I felt right at home down on Queen Street (which is a major street in downtown Sydney), because there was construction! It reminded me of AZ of course. I was seriously having issues finding everything and was starting to get irritated when I realized that it was because I had less than 5 hours of sleep in me...oh yeah! So I walked for ever until I found the bus stop to take me back to the hostel. The bus is called "The Link bus"!!! Only my fellow Wenatchians will get that...

I got back to the hostel and met a couple of my roomates: Lindsey (from Texas/Boston) and I think her name is Sandy or Sandra from Germany. I proceeded to sit down and chat with them and then Lindsey talked my ear off for the next couple hours! It was fun thought to talk to a fellow American. She's been here for like 7 months! Later I met my other two roomates, another girl from outside Koln (I told her I'd been there because my brother lived outside Dusseldorf for a year) and a French girl. I can't remember the French girls name but the other German girl is Mareike (very close to my previous roommate's name except it's like Mah-r-eye-kah). Everyone was extremely nice and I was even invited to go salsa dancing! Needless to say, that didn't happen as I was exhausted and completely freezing!!! We are so lucky because we have a heater in the room that someone left, otherwise I would have frozen to death last night for sure!

So today I need to get back out there and start taking pictures for all of you to see! The buildings are really cute here and there are a lot of side streets/allies that have fun cafes. I think I'm really going to like it here!

-Lisa