We're there! (here!)

Hello loyal blog-followers (all zero of you so far)!

We made it! I (Sam) was the first to arrive in LA, where I was generously hosted on ridiculously stoopid short-notice by Kate Fox and her boyfriend Matt. After about five hours I was re-united with my long-lost friend, Alex "Balls" "The Voice" "McDreamy" "Mr. Awesome-pants" Taylor, and I'm pretty sure rainbows and butterflies exploded out of the apartment when we embraced. A cool thing for me was the next morning we managed to also meet up with a guy whom I met in the Peruvian Amazon. It was strange to see him not covered in bees. The next day Dallllis and her family drove up from San Diego at "around noon."More rainbows, obviously.

...and now Dallllllllllis is here to help write the post! WE killed some time before getting dinner by going to the La Brea Tar pits, which are about as smelly and bubbly as you might expect.

Let's start going by time, and see if we can make the math work out:

At around 7:30pm on Jan 5 (california time) we met up with Chase (Unicorn Explosion!!!) at the airport, did the whole security blah blah blah and at 9:30 we took off for the FUTURE in our double-decker spaceship. I mean airplane. I mean cramped shower. As soon as the plane took off, it started raining out of the ceiling, onto my head. Then it stopped, so whatever, I guess.

We arrived in Fiji (Which hip locals call "the Feej")  [Lies. This is Dallis. Only Sam calls it that.  But he is hip and local. So.] .....at 5:00 am on Jan 7!!! What happened to the sixth?????? I'm glad none of us had a birthday then.

Then we hopped on another plane at 10:00 am, and arrived in Auckland around 1:00pm. We had to spend a little extra time in the airport because New Zealand is really strict about protecting their biodiversity and agriculture. Definitely the most intense I've seen. Most of us got through scott-free; chase had his boots washed by the customs officials. I actually had the worst of it- my boots and tent were sent to a mysterious lab for analysis and cleaning, so we had to wait around until I could pick up my stuff again by pushing a little red button next to a little window (think those little windows they used to open up to ask you the password at speakeasies in the '20s). I guess they cleaned all the sins off my stuff.

So now we're settled in our hostel, which is pretty nice, quite busy and with a four-person room to ourselves. No free wi-fi though, so we're bumming off the public library down the street.

I know, I know, I'm just milking mundane things in an effort to make them entertaining. In the coming days we'll be having real adventures as we attempt to view New Zealand when it's not raining, buy a car that won't kill us and figure out exactly where "Taranaki" is anyway.

Thanks for reading (even though no one has yet)!

Love,
Sam, Dallis, Alex, and Chase