Can I apply for citizenship yet?

I'm on day 6 of my new life in New Zealand. I feel like a new person. It's unbelievable. I feel so alive.

Yesterday, I got myself a mobile phone. Now I can be a texting fool like the rest of the New Zealanders. Funny story about the guy in the Vodafone store: I was thinking about shopping around a little more and asked the him when he'd be closing and he said, "3:00, maybe 2:30 or 2:00 if it's slow." Can you imagine a store in the US doing that? So I just bought the darn phone and went on with my day.

To reward myself on the phone purchase, I took a 12 minute ferry to Devonport, a suburb just north of Auckland. I walked around and made myself rest in the coffee shop for a while (my calves are solid muscle now) before I headed up to the top of Mt Victoria. I saw a sort of steppish path going straight up the side of the mount. About halfway, I realised it was quite steep and tending to be on the clumsy side of things, I stopped and thought, "It would be really bad to fall down the hill. My family would not like it." So I leaned forward more and hurried up to the top. When I got there, I was greeted by a bench with two nice people on it, Michelle from Nova Scotia (working on her PhD here) and Dave from Papua New Guinea (civil engineer for Auckland city). We ended up hanging out all day and now I have 2 new friends.

Today I wandered into the Auckland Museum today, which was great, though I am pretty bad at museums. Carrie can attest (Deutsches Museum delirium), our family goes into an instant sugar low and blood pressures drop the second we enter a museum. They had a fantastic exhibit on volcanoes though, including a simulation of Auckland if one should erupt anytime soon. Hope not! This is the land of volcanoes, so you never know.

After that some kiwis I met walking advised I wander over to the Domain for some free live jazz. I sat in the grass amongst about 500 other Aucklanders (in the shade) and thought, this is really not too bad. Gee. I think I have converted in 6 days. There's always a friendly face for conversation or directions. I love it.