L0p3z and Neno's Upside-Down Adventure: A week in New Zealand, Houses, Interviews and Tornados

We did arrive safely in Auckland last Tuesday, despite not updating the blog we have been keeping ourselves busy. Currently my cousin Hanna is kindly putting us up and driving us around on a tour of the city and North Shore. We have been looking to get out of her hair as soon as we can so we have been trawling flat share listings and visiting houses. Walking round looking at houses has been a good way to get our bearings, jumping on and off buses and ferries.

Auckland is a cool city, very spread out as Kiwis don't like living in high rises. Its interesting that the population of Auckland is about 1.3 million, about the size of Birmingham. Its also a quarter of the whole population of New Zealand. Luckily its nicer than Birmingham, and we quickly found a few areas we would like to live in. We were torn between the fashionable area of Parnell, the edgy cool of Ponsonby/Grey Lynn or the chilled out beachy vibe of Devonport. We looked at so many places online and visited a good number too. Some were just not to our liking others were fine but the location wasn't right. We think we have found a place in Devonport, completely different to what we are used too, near a beach.

Both of us have also been searching for jobs, the holiday can't last forever! There is some interest and there is a fair bit around, hopefully we will back to work soon.

We have had some chances to enjoy ourselves. We have climbed a mountain, Mount Victoria, although its only small. I needed smart clothes for interviews so we took a trip up to the Westfields out of town, its pretty similar to the ones back home, but they have awesome food courts. Anyone who has been to NZ or OZ will tell you its the cheapest way to eat out and the food is always better than the takeaways back home. Hanna took us to Takapuna which has some cool bars and restaurants and a nice beach.

This week the weather has turned a little, its been pretty wet all week although its warm. The big news is that a tornado hit a few miles west of us today, sadly it killed 3 people and has done a fair bit of damage. Its not an uncommon thing for them to occur here but unusual for people to be killed.