I love this country

Well, after a nine hour layover in LAX (which always makes me want to sing the miley cyrus song), about a 12-13 hour flight over the Pacific and a quick flight (relatively speaking) to Christchurch, I have arrived in New Zealand. On the flight to Christchurch I just stared out the window, looked at the beautiful country, the greenness, the sheep, and thought to myself, I bloody love this country. It's beautiful. After a brief hiccup involving my visa-evidently it wasn't in the system- I walked out into the street and into spring. Random fact- right before immigration, just as you enter, there's a huge "duty free" shop filled with nothing but perfume, cartons of cigarettes, and copious amounts of alcohol. Every size, shape and type you could imagine. It was ridiculous. Also, I exchanged quite a bit of my money at the LAX at an exchange rate of .83, which I thought was a little strange. Upon getting to New Zealand, I saw that they exchanged their currency at a rate of .77. Though not a huge difference, when exhanging hundreds of dollars, its quite irritating. And for those of you who have only experienced alaska airlines, you're missing out. I took air new zealand across the pacific, and it was crazy awesome. Two free meals, movies, games, tv, music. For. Free. I played tetris! Quite fantastic. I took an airport shuttle to a hostel, the coachman. Admittedly a little sketch, but whatevs. I got a dorm all to myself, for the time being anyway. Zack, you would absolutely hate it. Stowed my stuff there, grabbed all my mostly important things and am now at an internet cafe. Crazy. I'm just very stoked on NZ in general. Hopefully it wears off when I have to come home. I've been taking pictures, but I haven't had the opportunity to post any, for lack of adequate wifi and such. Also, I don't really like taking pictures of just the landscape or trees or things of that nature, so generally take pictures on the rare occasion that I can fit myself in there. So, I try to post them sometime, perhaps when I get to school. I'd appreciate your prayers for everything in general! Things have been quite smooth the whole way through, so praise God. Also... I'm in the future. Yeah. You heard me right. Its September 18th here. The future. Be jealous.