New Zealand Trip -- For Work :(

Those of you that know me probably know that I love to travel to new places and see things that I have never seen before. Well, this week I got to go to New Zealand for work. The only problem was that it was FOR WORK! So I didn't get to see much besides our work building and the hotel.

I left Tuesday afternoon around noon and arrived in Auckland around 5:30 PM (3 hour flight + 2 hour time difference + 30 minutes of the plane being late -- I will explain this later). One of my friends from work has a good friend that lives in Auckland and asked me if I would mind taking a cricket bat to him. I didn't mind and the only problem it caused was that I had to check in as checked luggage. Imagine that, they didn't want me taking a three foot bat on the plane with me -- I wonder why?

Anyway, he picked me up at the airport to get the bat and drove me to the office. It was nice of him to do. The one benefit of the drive being about 40 minutes in traffic was that I actually got to see some of the countryside! It is a very beautiful place and they even have wide roads! I forget how big roads can be after driving in Sydney for the past three months! It made me remember coming home from my mission. I can still remember that first drive home from the airport in Salt Lake and I just kept thinking to myself that I couldn't believe how big the roads were!

I met my boss and coworkers at a work party they were having to celebrate a launch of one of the Amex cards in New Zealand. It was nice getting to meet a lot of the people in that office and I found out that most of them were new. Most of them have only been with the company around 5 to 8 months.

After meeting everyone my boss (Bill), the new director (Nick) that my boss is hiring from Phoenix, and I all went to the hotel to put our stuff away and then walked to a restaurant to eat dinner. It was a placed called Euro and it was really good.

By then it was 10 o'clock and Bill and Nick were tired to we went back to the hotel. I knew there was no way that I would be able to go to sleep, since it was really only 8 PM (Syd) for me so I decided to go and explore the city. Of course it was 10 PM on a Tuesday night so all the shops were closed and no one was out (Yes, they close at about 5:30 like Sydney). However, I was walking by a souvenir shop and the man was fixing his sign. I was just kind of looking in the window and he asked if I wanted to go in. So I did a got a couple of things for the kids and a necklace for Stace (It had a kiwi bird on it and was made from a shell that is found around New Zealand).

One the way back I was able to take some great photos (as you can see above and below). The first is nothing more than a very big Christmas ornament. The security guard that I got to take the picture for me told me that he had never taken a picture before! I was glad that I could help enrich his life! The statue below is of one of the natives that are called Maori. This was the extent of my exploring (I know you are all jealous that I saw a two story tall Christmas ball!).

The next day we had meetings. I had prepared a presentation for the ICSS (International Consumer card and Small business Services) marketing. In case you are wondering I work for ICSS Risk Management. I thought it was just going to be for about five to ten people but we walked in and there were 30 to 40 people there. It went well and then my boss had some meetings and then he did a presentation as well. After that we left for the airport about 4PM and went home! That is the extent of my trip. We are definitely going to go back to New Zealand with the kids to go see things! Of course I didn't feel like I got to see enough.

One thing that is weird that they do both in Australia and New Zealand is what I referred to above when I said that I would mention it later, so here it goes (Did that sentence even make sense?). The airplanes will sit and wait for all passengers to get on the plane before it leaves. Meaning that if someone is late getting to the gate they will make everyone on the plane wait until everyone is aboard. This doesn't happen in the US, they just leave! This is why I was 30 minutes late getting into New Zealand. And when I was waiting to board the plane back to Sydney I kept hearing announcements like this, "Would the .... Smith family and ..... Jones please report to gate 4. The plane and all of its passengers are waiting for you to leave!" I thought it was kind of funny!