Such a productive but annoying day

Today was our last day to get things sorted before we head down south tomorrow. We set out early to catch the bus for our bank appointment this morning. Luckily a bus goes directly from the centre of Auckland to the area it was situated in. On the bus we got talking to a man behind us who hasn't been back to New Zealand, his home, for 7 years. It's always welcoming and reassuring when someone engages in conversation with you and I feel this trip has made us both more confident to strike up conversation with people regardless if we know them or not. We made it to our appointment early so we grabbed ourselves a coffee and headed to the bank. Our appointment lasted an hour and we had a lovely woman who set everything up for us in no time at all. We walked away feeling so relieved to have our bank accounts ready to go. We bumped into the man from the bus as we left the bank and he invited us to a free dinner tonight. As lovely as the gesture is we do still feel a little worried about it and with our early flight tomorrow we decided not to go. The next job for today was to buy a mobile phone that's on a New Zealand network. I will need to be contactable by the parents so we went and bought the cheapest phone that has Internet for $39 or about £24. Nick has been advised to have some warm hoodies so we next hopped back on a bus to head to an op shop. My converse have also reached the point where they are so worn there's holes in the bottom so really they aren't practical to use in rainy New Zealand so we were looking for shoes too. I managed to find Nick a black hoodie in the women's section of the store and we also got him some super thick socks to wear for early starts on the farm. We didn't find any shoes and there aren't many op shops here in Auckland so we headed back on a bus to a K-Mart and mall that we hoped would have something. On the way to the bus we passed an unusual graveyard that had been set up in a small valley but the surreal part was a bridge had been built in the last 50 years over the area. We did wonder if some graves had had to be built on top of which was quite disturbing if it is the case. We made it to the mall after running for the bus and got a few more bits in K-Mart including my farmer checked shirt I'd been after. Unfortunately no shoes though and after visiting all the stores we realised shoes are so overpriced for the rubbish quality they are. We also visited a huge shoe store which had a sale on but again there wasn't anything. I started to want to buy boots but in the long run they aren't that practical for travelling. It was quite frustrating that we didn't find any shoes but we tried not to let it get us down and focus on what we need to do today. We headed back to town and went back to set up our IRD applications, while Nick was doing the forms I set up the new phone. Everything was coming together now. The last job was to get Nick a much needed haircut. Unfortunately we went to an expensive barbers with good reviews online but he hated his haircut completely. The guy wasn't understanding what he wanted changing and he walked away putting a hat on immediately. It's not at all bad but when it's your hair it's hard to see it in a positive way if you don't like it. Hopefully it'll grow a bit and he'll be happier with it. We spent the rest of the night packing and making some dinner. We also had to say goodbye to my lovely converse but by a stroke of luck our hostel has a "help yourself" box where guests can leave unwanted items and you can take whatever for free and inside the box was a pair of black daps in my size so I'm taking those. After our farm time I'll look at investing in new nicer shoes. Tomorrow is the day we fly to our new life for 3 months on the farm, how exciting!Leia mais