Air New Zealand is amazing!

Note: I have been in New Zealand for about a day at the time of writing this. Since I did not have the blog up during my day of travel or my first day here at Massey, I will be posting my experiences from those days in chronological order. The events of this post took place on July 4th-6th (the 5th didn’t exist for me)

My flight to New Zealand is easily the best long flight I’ve been on. It was a thirteen hour ride from San Francisco to Auckland. They moved me from where I was to a window seat on the other side of the plane because the woman I would have been sitting next to had a baby. Then on the other side of the plane the seat next to me was vacant. More room for me.

Then there is the on board entertainment. There is a TV on the seat in front of you, and the screen must have been about 6’’x4 ½’’. Then at your side was a remote, and instead of just having several channels, they had a menu. Movies, television, music, and flight information. There were somewhere between 50-80 movies to choose from and a whole lot of music to listen to if you had forgotten your iPod. I ended up watching District 9 and How to Train Your Dragon, and for some reason found myself listening to AC/DC. Maybe I should buy some AC/DC. I can honestly say that I would rather take a 13 hour flight on Air New Zealand than an 8 hour flight on United.

But perhaps the best part was as soon as I boarded the plane, it hit me really hard that I was actually going to New Zealand. I was freakin going to New Zealand! I mean, I had known it, but it still hadn’t quite hit me. The last few days had been an emotional rollercoaster, and I was pretty sure that the next few would prove the same, but from the beginning of that flight I was extremely excited about everything.

Also, since I wrote this more than a day after I had landed, I can confirm that the jet lag is not bad at all. The big change is that I am 5 hours behind (and a day ahead), as well having gotten very little sleep the night before. The flight seemed to kick my internal clock out of whack, a bit like digital clock after a power outage. My internal clock was asking to be reset. When I told my body that it was morning, it seemed to be able to accept that. I was able to stay up until 11 o'clock that night without too much trouble. The jet lag flying to Europe is much worse in my opinion.