Departure and Orientation Days

On January 23, 2017 at 8:30 PM, I finally started my journey: I flew from Frankfurt to Auckland via Dubai and Brisbane.
At the airport, I met the other four German au pairs who were flying with me. We all got along right away and were glad to have found our first friends. Unfortunately, our seats on the plane were not next to each other, so we had to swap seats with other passengers a little bit, but in the end, everyone was relatively satisfied with their seat. On the plane, I continued to get to know people: I actually sat next to a 15-year-old from Freiburg who will be doing a year abroad in New Zealand. 
The food on the plane was surprisingly good and plentiful, unlike regular airplane food.
Once we arrived in Dubai, we all took a little walk because we had a 16-hour horror flight ahead of us. Sleeping on the plane was not easy for any of us, so after another stopover in Brisbane, we all arrived in Auckland at the airport completely exhausted. We went through customs and then took a shuttle bus directly to our beautiful hotel, where the Orientation Days took place.
At the hotel, the program started immediately... Luckily, it was only for about 2 hours and then we could finally go to our rooms and sleep.
The breakfast the next morning was amazing... We all filled our stomachs before the Orientation program continued. There, we finally got to know the other 7 au pairs from all over the world (USA, Denmark, Sweden, France). In the afternoon and evening, we had the Auckland Tour, which unfortunately wasn't as good as expected. But the pizza we had was still very tasty :-) 
The next day, we had a baby first aid course and then we were picked up by our host families or traveled to them.
Overall, it was really three wonderful days with some new friends, good food, nice hotel rooms, a beautiful hotel grounds, and of course, lots of sun :-)

Sending lots of love back home ❤️