Arrived in Christchurch!

I'm in New Zealand. The weather is terrible. It's cold, rainy, and veeeery windy. The flights were ok. The first flight from LAX to Auckland was about 13 hours long. I watched 3 movies and then closed my eyes and pretending I was asleep for about 5 hours. The meal was served while I was watching Inception so I spent the last 40 minutes of the movie trying not to vomit. Not the best part of my flight. After my nausea subsided, I watched Dinner For Schmucks. I understand that this movie is usually watched to induce nausea, but I took my chances of a double-negative effect. I liked it. It had more of a plot than I was expecting. Finally, I watched The Other Guys with Marky Mark. It was also surprisingly good. Once the flight landed in Auckland, I had to go through customs. New Zealand has very tight customs restrictions pertaining to food. If you bring food in, you get fined $400. They also check your hiking shoes to make sure that you don't have dog crap on them. The flight from Auckland to Christchurch was about an hour and very turbulent. There were a lot of younger people on the flights and they wouldn't shut up. It's no wonder why everybody hates American travelers.

Finally, my team and I took a quick stop-off at the Clothing Distribution Center to drop off some equipment that we hand carried on the planes and then went to our hotels. I decided to stay in a real hotel this year, right near downtown. Christchurch is small, so that only saves me ~5 blocks of walking, but I'm mostly excited to stay in a hotel with a restaurant, bar, gym, and private bathrooms. I don't know why everyone doesn't do this! I only get 2 hours of internet access a day here, so I may not have time to post pictures, but this place looks like a 5 star hotel from the late 70s that hasn't changed since the BeeGees.

The Hotel is the Crowne Plaza and I'm in room 607 if you want to make a very expensive call to harass me.