I'm going to take the opportunity to talk about buses in Auckland.

They're really expensive. When I was living on the North Shore, I was paying $7/day just to get to and from my placement. I suppose that might be standard, but I'm used to paying Brisbane student fare and it's way cheaper! If I had needed to take more than one bus to get to Massey, I would have had to pay extra. They don't have transfers here, so every time you get on another bus you pay again. Ludicrous! Today I did quite a bit of travelling and I bought a day pass for $10. Well worth it, considering I will probably have hopped on and off different buses at least 10 times by the end of the day. I'm sure yesterday I ended up paying around $15 in bus fare during my travels, so for a long day of looking around the day pass is definitely the way to go. Yay for living super close to my placement now and not needing buses AND my roomie said I could use her bike.

Now the drivers...

They are fabulous! I took the same bus every day for a week and a half to get to Massey and the bus driver after two days knew exactly where I was going and would just automatically print out the ticket. She also advised me about getting a pass if I was going to be doing it consistently, but since I only had a few days that didn't work out. Same with going home - the bus driver just knew I was going to Sunnynook. Very impressive. They also will stop if they see you running and I have been lucky a few times.

Except one weird story...I was out last weekend and got on a bus and recognized the driver as one that would often be waiting at Massey at the same time as me. Said hi, told him where I was going, and got my ticket. Got to the end and everyone got off, so I figured this must be where I needed to get off as well. Said thanks as I was leaving and he said "Oh no! You should have gotten off earlier, I'm really sorry, I should have told you - just stay 0n the bus". So he drove me all the way back to where I apparently should have gotten off, even though it wasn't his fault. He also asked me out twice during the journey. AWKWARD.

What else? Well in non-bus related news, Jeremy and crew did a big clean-up today. I haven't really talked to him but he had so many people helping him I'm sure they got a huge amount done. I really don't want to move and it looks like we won't have to. Not having to pay rent while this all gets sorted out is great as well.