its 6:50 AM in Aukland

We (and our luggage - woo!) have survived our Pacific flight!

A few notes:

I'm typing on a free computer in the termina. The keyboard has english and asian "letters" on it. Its confusing.

LAX is a hole. I've used nicer bathrooms on Bourbon Street.

We were very fortunate that we visited the United ticket counter a few weeks ago and got e-tickets. With e-tickets, they checked our bags all the way through to Christchurch. Otherwise, we would have had to a) only check our bag to LAX, b) get our bags at LAX c) take the terminal transfer bus with ALL OUR LUGGAGE to a new terminal. And re-check the bags. Having no checked bags was a definite plus. If this was The Amazing Race, we would have rocked this leg.

There was a family (I presume) of Maoris that I swear, were packing their entire house for shipment. Including a 42" plasma TV - still in its box. And 5 48"x24" grey tupperware roughneck containters. With the lids simply snapped on, as if that was sufficient. Yeah, I think they used 3 rolls of tape and stalled the line by 30 minutes getting those containers ready. Who does that? I'm just glad we weren't behind them.

Our flight was nice. Free movies (8" screen w/remote), free video games, free music. And FREE WINE! Yes, just what I needed. And the food was decent. My language lesson for the day: a blanket is known as a rug.

The staff were very helpful, seats were ok. The plane was a 777 and Will and I had a whole window section of seats to ourselves, so he sat by the window, I sat by the aisle, and all our crap went in the middle seat. I watched Devil Wears Prada. Will watched some car racing show. I ended up taking 2 lunesta and think I slept for 4-5 hrs. There was a baby who was screaming for a large portion of the flight (I felt bad for them), so I think I would have slept more if I didn't have to listen to that. I did listen to my mp3 player for most of the night and that helped. I think. We'll see how tired I am in 10 hrs.

I do have a lovely latte that I got for "take away" so that has pretty much made my day. Will is eating McDonalds. Ew.

Anyways, I'm now being jostled by this dude behind me wearing his huge backpack (put it on the floor, geez!), and Will has finished up his emails, so I guess we should find our flight to Christchurch!