Sorry for the delay, have been catching up on work and life and sick kids.

So I left off with us leaving Sydney on Friday. We had breakfast at the airport (Beckett said it was the best eggs benedict she’d ever had) and then got on our flight to Auckland.

You know, when you are flying from Australia to New Zealand, you think “oh, that’ll be an easy jaunt, it’s so close” but then you realize it’s a) not as close as it looks on a globe and b) another country. So the flight was almost four hours but since it was international, we got a meal and wine. Score! (But it also means passport control and customs yet again.)

So anyway, we watched La La Land on the flight, ate some reasonably yummy airline food, drank some New Zealand wine and then landed in Auckland. We got in a cab to get to our airbnb and proceeded to sit in gridlocked traffic for an hour and a half. The traffic was due to torrential rain that was causing…I dunno, flooding? Or just bad driving? In any case, our trip took three times longer than usual so by the time we got to the airbnb, we were tired and missed the speaker dinner.

I volunteered to walk to the grocery store, which was about 15 minutes away. Thanks to a big umbrella, I stayed fairly dry, but I also learned that Auckland is pretty darn hilly. Our airbnb was lovely, but it was pretty warm and humid, thanks to the rain, and the smoke detector in my bedroom kept going off. I had to just remove it altogether.

The next day was WordCamp Auckland, which happened to be directly across the street! So handy! We met some nice people, saw some coworkers (including Kristen from my last post), had hangi for lunch (I probably am phrasing that badly, but it’s basically meats and vegetables cooked underground) and went to the afterparty that evening. (Though the WordCamp actually lasted through the weekend.) That was fun. Met some more people, partook of the local beer…

Maybe a bit too much because we opted not to go for a run in Auckland the next morning. Oops. It was probably raining anyway. It basically poured all weekend. I had plans to meet Tara, my elementary school best friend for lunch, but I got a text before saying that her house was flooding. Ack! That’s how bad it was.

A slide from a great talk about project management. I need to remember this.

Look, there we are about to speak!

Beckett during our talk.

Deborah and I were slated to speak early Sunday, and I think it went pretty well. I mean, it went. No one threw rotten vegetables at us, which is the main thing.

After WordCamp was over, the weather cleared up, so we went for a walk around the harbour, which is where our airbnb was. It was lovely! Ate some yummy food. Beckett went looking for geocaches. I caught Pokemon. Bought some souvenirs.

Here are a lot of random pics from our stay:

Hee

A library on the harbor, built in a shipping container

Beckett did some geocaching

Scrambled eggs were so bright!

Proof the clouds parted briefly.

I think that’s a volcano back there.

Where we stayed

Relaxing

Artsy.

Super hilly park

Hilly!

So many stairs just to get into the park!

Crazy trees

The next day was yet another flight, but not until the afternoon, and it was sunny! So we walked around again, did a little more shopping, then straightened up the airbnb and got in a much faster taxi to the airport. We were headed back to Australia, this time to Melbourne…