A Day in Auckland and our first evening in Whangarei

(Dawn-Whangarei) Sunday after we arrived in their early morning was a day of jet lag and lots of rainy weather. We forced ourselves to stay up all day passing the time in our 3 bedroom downtown hotel suite, swimming in the indoor pool, and venturing out in the rain to local shopping and a neat museum/aquarium with New Zealand and antarctic wildlife. We are pictured with the penguins there. We got back to the hotel around 6:30 at night and by the time Lynn returned with his Anthony Bourdain like authentic chinese takeout from around the corner, all the kids were alseep except...guess who?...Andrew. The 3 of us made it to 7:30 or so and crashed. Yesterday (Monday) was a great day in Auckland. Refreshed from a good nights sleep, we met with the medical council member in her Auckland suburbian home office for review of our credentials. She like everyone in New Zealand was very nice and we enjoyed seeing a bit of New Zealand suburban life. All seemed to go well as we poured over our various documents for approval. We hope to start work by the end of the week. We had a wonderful cab driver named Peter from Western Samoa. After the council meeting he took us to a fish market. The girls are pictured holding their noses there but we all got use to the smell. You can see Peter holding up a large octopus in the pictures. He tried to tell me how one goes about cooking Octopus with ink included! We grabbed some lunch at the market (fresh cheese, smoked fish, seafood chowder, and crackers) and then rode a free city bus back to the area of our hotel. We started to go up in the observatory (space needle building called Sky City seen in pictures) but ran out of time. We walked amid the busy shopping business district to meet our private chartered shuttle at the hotel. After packing all the luggage in a pull behind trailor we headed the 100 miles north through beautiful rural New Zealand to Whangarei. We went by the hospital to pick up the key and across the street we found our temporary house. The children were very excited to unpack their things and settle into "their own rooms". The girls used some cute sleeping bags Nana gave them to cover their twin beds in the room they share. Andrew surprisingly opted to have his own room which he displayed his neopets, cars, and jets sleeping bag. Phillip of course claimed the largest bedroom as the oldest kid. We are sharing a single bathroom which the kids hope means fewer baths! The best thing about the house is the yard which can be viewed from the many windows and contains a flat grassy area for play as well as beautiful plants such as a huge habiscus, lime trees, some other citrus tree, red gardenia, fall colored Maple tree, and a climbing rose bush. Today holds an exciting list of things to arrange so we better get at it.