Thursday, April 5, 2007

Everythings is almost normal but slightly different





So we have been here for 4 days now and there are a few things that I notice that are just slightly different than back home. Most are just me seeing things as quirky or funny but might as well post what i think is a lot different.

1. Beer is expensive, regardless on how you look at it paying $6 for a bottle of beer and around $8-10 for a pint is a lot of money. Actually, everything is expensive here, no matter how you look at it, we were at the grocery store and wanted to get some bacon...but the $13 price tag stopped us real quick. I know what your thinking, "Matt be quiet, you complain about the price of everything" but this is an honest case of even WITH our decent exchange rate we still have to pay more than we did at the states. Even so, we are living it up and having fun, we have not NOT done something that we did want to do because of the price, but sometimes we are shocked.

2. The toilets are funny. Some toilets have a HUGE tank hovering around 3 feet off the ground and a 2" tube leading down to the pole, and of course the toilets flush with a button instead of a lever and they flush backwards. Also, the men's urinals most of the time do not have a button or lever to push, i think they go off on their own but i have yet to see this.

3. Missing the lunch window is bad news. Lunch here starts at noon as usual but ends around 2p. So if you miss the two hour window you pretty much have to wait for the dinner window which starts at 6p and goes to 10p. We found this out the hard way and walked the city for an hour before we found a good non-fast food (MC Donald's, KFC, Burger King, Subway in full effect here) to sit down and eat and enjoy our meal.

4. For some reason, b.o. is all over this place, for us it seems to be more a part of the Maori culture and it does not discriminate with men or women. There are a lot of stinky people roaming around here.

5. There are a lot of hopped up cars here, I would say even more than los angeles. Cars here are just cooler looking, even the really small ones are very neat to look at and see.

Well I think that is about it, call this post more like a "fluff" piece than a log but just thought you peeps want to know whats up. I have uploaded lots of photos that we took and i plan to upload a lot more soon.

2 comments:

ory said...

Those tiolets look like the flushless design seen here in s few places. they are supposed to be better for the environment because they dont use water to flush. maybe it is just new pee flushing the old stuff out. We take for granted the lack of smell people have here in the states. Most of the world doesnt use deoderant like we do, and they probably look at us as freaks for doing so...glad to see you are having fun.

ory said...

I locked myself out of your laptop. what's your user name and password?