City

Our hostel is over about 6 floors of a giant straight up, straight down block on Queen St, the main shopping street of Auckland. As such, the little block rooms are surrounded on all sides by more little block rooms. The walls are very thin, like paper in fact. We have a couple of stereotypical American girls to one side, who seem to constantly be drying their hair. On another side, there is a couple who keep storming back to their room and then having massive rows, seemingly oblivious to the fact that everyone can hear them. A few doors down, there is a dorm of boys who enjoy staying up until the early hours swigging back beer. To contend with this, we have a fridge that appears to be auditioning for the opera, with its continual gurgles and droning. We also face right onto the street, which, come both Friday and Saturday nights, has been filled with noisy revellers and police sirens. But nevermind, for it is comfy enough and it keeps us out of the rain which is currently plaguing Auckland.
It is strange, being in a hostel with so many people after living in the car for two months. It is like one giant flatshare, with slow elevators to take us from floor to floor (stairs are for fire escape only). The huge communal kitchen is stuffed with bags of food, all labelled and stacked haphazardly about. The lounge is generally host to a few people, kicking back and reading leaflets. The computer room is always full and there is a dark room, filled with sofas and the odd person snoring where you can go and watch a movie.
So, Saturday, we went to the library and stayed there for most of the afternoon, until it shut at 4. We found a space to work in amongst all the students studying for their finals (End of term in a few days, muchos stress and panic seething through the air for those who have not yet finished their revision) and got stuck in, jobhunting and cv perfecting and all that jazz.
Back in our room we viewed the building just over from us which spent the day having a gigantic plastic santa and reindeer and presents attached to it, to the disruption of the traffic. For some odd reason, Santa's face is entirely swathed in fabric with a sign promising that 'All will be revealed' on Sunday at 1.30. Neither Alex nor I are exactly sure what they mean by this - Santa's face is pretty much generic merry man complete with white hair and beard. Alex has a theory that it is going to be Michal Jackson's face, in memory. We shall see, anyways, later this afternoon.
We had dinner (hooray for pasta) and splashed out on cheese to make it palatable. Now we have a fridge, the sky is the limit - you have no idea how much you miss cheese until you have no fridge. Once we had washed up, we wandered into the movie room with our hot milk and cookies (!) and grabbed a sofa for optimum viewing. The film appeared to be about 20 minutes in, I'm not sure what it was called, but it was highly entertaining, involving a rogue super computer's plan to replace everyone in the chain of command in America and reset the government, using explosive crystals and a sonic trumpet. Once this cinematic gem has finished, we headed to bed, in lieu of the hostel's adjoining bar plans of wrestling for a prize.
New Zealand appears a little more conservative than England in that the shops close early on a Saturday and most don't even open on a Sunday. So with the library only open for 4 hours today, we are not entirely sure what to do with ourselves. Santa's reveal will obviously be much more entertaining than we expected, as it is likely the only thing that will occur today other than the job hunting...

So, an edit for today's happenings. We went to the library again and worked for a bit. Later on, we saw Santas face, revealed to the masses - it is overtly cheery, and his tongue is poking out. It is actually a little disturbing, but never mind. We watched the epic Christmas window display at the big department store (to rival Harrods) It consists of mechanical puppet mice working to ake presents, put on a theatre show and generally have a fun and sparkly Christmas. We'll take some pictures to put up tomorrow.
We saved on food all day and treated ourselves to the cinema this evening to see New Moon. In Alex's expert opinion the CGI was both well done (the wolves) and beyond awful (the water).
We had pasta and cheese for dinner and it was taaasty! Now an early night to prepare for the morrow!