All roads lead to the pub

As I get my navigation skills back from having lost them almost altogether in Hong Kong, I realise that all roads in Auckland generally lead to Galbraiths - my new second home. Spending most of my time job/car/house hunting, evenings in the pub are a general break from everything which is becoming really nice.

Since I've been here I haven't really missed Leicester that much - I thought I would miss it a lot more. I miss the people but not the place - although skype and conference calling is definately proving the best way of keeping in touch!

The days seem to be flying by which is a bit scary because I don't have as long left here as I thought I would. I seem to have spent the majority of this week on the search for a car which has opened up a whole new world to me. Auckland definately should go down in history as having the largest amount of backstreet car dealers! Found a few bargains on the car front which may prove to be good buys so have a lot of decisions to make! I saw a really nice Mitsubishi RVR 4x4 today which is going quite cheaply so I may go for that - or there is a Toytoa Corolla of a Nissan Sentra or an Audi A4 estate which are all possiblities. I think the easiest thing would be to get mum to courier over my TT though!!!

Having spent most of today (Sunday) car searching, I decided it was about time I started to do some proper planning. I have therefore spent the majority of the afternoon with a map and campsite list in front of me deciding where I want to go, how much its going to cost me and what my best route will be! I'm giving myself 9 weeks to travel the North Island - Jason has loads of camping equipment I can use so I don't need to worry about that so come October, I will be off!!! I'm finding the whole prospect quite exciting and have been shown my way around a car by Jason this afternoon, in case the worst should happen and I break down by myself in the middle of nowhere with no phone signal. I've learnt how to jack up a car, change a tyre, check my tyre pressure, how to align brakes and flush out my oil filters!

I have a job starting in 2 weeks in the Bay of Islands which is hopefully going to be good, but I'll blog about that another time. So I'm all sorted for September at least which gives me Oct & Nov to do my own thing before the family come over in December.

Yesterday (Sat) was also good - we headed up to the Bach in Mangawhai Heads for Jasons AGM at the fishing club. It involved lamb on the spit (my first lamb in NZ), and lots of men talking fishing. I was pretty much the only girl there, which made me feel a little outnumbered by men, however it was ok as I stuck with Jason and Karl. Before we went to the fishing club, Karl and I headed out on a drive around the heads and went to several beaches which was really nice.

I am also getting down the list of Jasons things for me to do, well one in particular, I am getting a taste for white wine, which last night involved me drinking 3/4 of a bottle to myself. Jason and I sat up and watched a film after Karl went to bed through which I demolished 3 glasses of wine and some left over Chinese takeaway from the night before - good times!

Anyway I'll leave it there for now, I've just rambled about really random stuff as its come into my head.....now to the pub!