Day One

I left my parents happy and hopeful for while also sad and worried, a fun mix of emotions. Some of this rubbed off on me, but I stayed excited (read: welling up). This was my first time away from home good and proper and I hadn't manage to convince anyone of my on-to-itness while in Auckland.

I was allowed two bags of 23kg each with 7kg carry on, mine were 21.6, 23.0 and 7.6kg respectively + laptop bag :D. On the plane I managed to fall asleep for a decent while: never before have I. 'Lars and the real girl' is a great movie, serious and hilarious; 'Chaos theory' isn't too bad either. Off the plane I rushed (as fast as one can rush carrying four bags of the aforementioned weight) up an escalator to the hotel shuttle station and to the Hotel! Points forward out of open shuttle door Fresh Prince styles.

The Hotel Mayflower really is pretty sweet, clearly old, but clean and functioning where it matters. A little luxurious and a little expensive for a student, but someone managed to convince out of a Hostel lest 4 months worth of stuff mysteriously vanished. I united myself with the WWW and showered before hitting this place they like to call San Francisco.

Being 3pm there weren't many options but to walk around... so I did. The city is big but it's not too daunting to walk everywhere. I had been hungry for ages so my first mission was to find food, and I had also completely forgotten to bring any sort of power adapter (doh #1) so that had to be acquired. I walked to South-East to Union square (it's famous, didn't you know!?) - Gucci, Louis Vuiton, ... keep walking; East to be exact, through the 'Fincancial district' (picking up a cherry turnover on the way) and to the Embarcadero, which is seaside. Some old American lady who seemed to like to talk talked to me for a while, and then on a whim went talked to someone without any acknowledgement, meh.

I like SF (that's what us cool people like to call it). It's like Auckland but:

• More higher
• More wider
• More people
• More character
• Mo' money

In Auckland you're used to seeing the tops of buildings in your field of vision, to achieve the same result here one has to look up all the time, which I was doing, and I probably looked like a douche. All the roads are square and there isn't a consensus on a hill direction relative to the water so it's easy to get disorientated (I, ofcourse, did not :P).

I didn't want to spend much on a first night dinner, and the only place where I was gonna find a cooperative restaurant was in Chinatown. Dinner was decent. Afterward I went straight ¿home, booked an Alcatraz trip (two days in advance), tried to find something on the many tv channels, failed and then slept.

There will be pictures of all this on Picasa... soon.