Rickie's Antarctic Adventure: One incredibly longggggg day

So I'm in Christchurch, NZ now. It feels so, SO good to be able to take a shower and lay in a flat position. Over 27hours of flying and laying over was every bit as shitty as I thought it was going to be and more. I did learn that flying Qantas is pretty nice. You get the TV's in the back of all the headrests so you can watch movies all night long if you want. It also had a cool feature where it showed on a map in real time where the plane currently was, speed, altitude, and how long until the destination, pretty cool. The seats are a little bigger too and that's so amazing when you're sitting there forever. I tried taking sleepy pills and it did make me tired but it's so hard to sleep sitting up when you're all cramped. I slept and slept and SLEPT for what seemed like forever and woke up thinking we had to be really close. So I checked the planes location and we were still 4.5hrs away! I wanted to cry like a little girl. I couldn't sleep anymore so I just had to watch movies and try not to cry loud enough that others could hear me, so I wept into my sleeve, it was very therapeutic. We did finally land in Auckland. After we cleared customs we had to go check in over at the domestic terminal for our flight to Christchurch. Here is a pic I took waiting in that line to check in...

My first impression of NZ is that it's alot like Seattle. Really overcast and everything is a little bit wet. I don't know if it's like that all the time but it is now.

Not only is it an Exit but it's also apparently the Way Out, doors all over say Way Out over them...

Here is another shot from inside the terminal in Auckland, waiting for our flight...

So they gave me a seat in row #1. Everyone gets settled in and were ready to leave and it turns out I'm the only person sitting in the first row. If we had crashed into a mountain I would have been the first passenger to croak, but we didn't.