Week 6 Men staring at hedges

After not contacting you for a week, here's a sign of life from me.

I'm still doing well, especially because this week was eventful.

At work, my time is now enriched by two new interns. Philipp and Chris, also students from Kehl, started their internship with us at the end of February. So, I am currently busy passing on my valuable experiences to both of them. I would say we had a productive week. Philippe's and my biggest success was planning a prank that we pulled on Timo K. when he went back to Germany. Writing messages with a fake email address. Absolutely hilarious, you know.

All in all, the crazies enrich our everyday life.

Stefan and I also had a lot of good ideas this week. For example, we thought of writing all the tasks we receive at work on cards and putting them all in a bag. Then each of us interns takes turns drawing a card and has to perform the assigned task. It's like a Secret Santa for interns. The king task this week was: drive by car to the North Shore during rush hour and take photos of hedges. For whatever reason. Ended up with 50 pictures of road greenery on my phone. Not everyone can say that. Left-hand driving is now quite easy. I think it's almost worse for the passenger, because he always thinks we're about to scrape along the parked cars on his side.

In Auckland, the new semester for students started at the end of February. This means the Summer Discount at the Empire (our residence, also known as a dive, witch's house, or disguised factory for weird people) is over and it got 60€ more expensive. This increases the monthly rent to a total of 536€. And spoiler: it's probably not worth it. For example, you should never look under the furniture. Under the infamous couch, it looks like this. More impressions of our apartment can be found in my Week 1 blog.

Friday evening, my flatshare and I went out with Vera, a friend of Sophia who is currently traveling in New Zealand. After a cozy pre-drinking session at our place (spoiler alert: something I might regret), we went out. With a stop at Lord of the Fries (wasn't good at all), we went to a bar. It was rather upscale there, so it's exactly the environment where I like to network.😄

Fortunately, Vera knew one of the bartenders, who made our beer affordable. Great woman.

The doorman at the bar were two 140-kilogram Maori oxen. I'll bring them to the next Kehl game. P wouldn't have messed with them. Although he didn't really start the fight with the German security guards. Supposedly.

But the fact that the new semester has started really has an impact here. On Friday, there was also a freshman event where the students had to show up in togas. As a result, the city was swarming with young people wrapped in white bedsheets. Would it be okay for a New Zealander disguised as a Roman, Mum? Probably not either.😄

In the end, we got home around 3 o'clock in the morning, after making a detour for a McFlurry (which I might also regret).

At half past six, we got out of bed again because we had rented a car to go to the beach.

So, we took the bus and then an Uber to the airport to pick up the car. I'm not a doctor, but I could have known that a combination of alcohol, little sleep, and weird food can end badly. Summing up, I felt sick during the whole bus ride and almost threw up in the Uber car afterwards. After I was able to relax a bit in front of the car rental and was cheered up by my flatmates, we started driving. I soon felt better, so I was able to entertain Sophia and Loni again with my incomparable sense of humor that they love so much.😄

The first beach we visited was Karekare Beach. It was kilometers long, relatively empty, and incredibly beautiful. Black sand, breaking tide, and hills and mountains all around. Highly worth seeing. I think pictures can say more than I can describe.

When we were taking photos near a rocky promontory in the water, suddenly a seal appeared out of nowhere. You can see seals at many beaches in New Zealand, so it's not a big deal. But when you don't expect it at all and suddenly such an animal swims a few meters away from you, it's something special. Unlike the image quality.😄

After chilling for a bit and everyone getting their own sunburn (I had an interesting pattern), we continued to Piha, the next beach. I must confess to my shame that I didn't research what's going on there beforehand. So, I was surprised by how much you can do there.

Flip-flops are not the best idea for some of the climbs. And they're not even sandals...

There were some nice trails around the beach. Whoever first guesses what kind of animal the mountain right next to the beach is seen as in the following picture will be mentioned in the next blog post.

Since we still had our rental car on Saturday, we also went grocery shopping. In the end, I had two bags full of food. It's amazing how much I consume here...

On Sunday, we went to the Auckland Zoo. It was really great, animals are just good people. :)

In a darkened enclosure, you could even see a kiwi. Unfortunately, the otters weren't outside in their enclosure. That almost made me stomp the ground in anger.

So, that's it for now. Greetings to SVH and congratulations on the ugliest carnival parade float of all time.😄

I'm done and hungry again.