I lost a day somewhere.

Well, I have safely arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand. It's weird to have taken off on Thursday night, traveled for a total of about 15-16 hours and land where its Saturday. I'm missing a day somewhere. At least I'll get it back when I fly home, kind of.
It's overcast, and probably in the mid 60's here, and sprinkling occasionally. The flights, well, were flights. 13 hours stuck in economy isn't my idea of a great time. However, I've had a lot worse. Qantas airlines has a pretty sweet setup. Every seat had its own little 6" tv screen in the seat back in front, and in the arm rest was a removable (corded) remote control that controlled the video on demand system. There were a myriad of movies to choose from, as well, as a bunch of television programs. The remote control also had game pad style controls on it, and you could play old 16-bit gaming system quality games. So between that, my book, and trying to get some sleep, I managed to say fairly occupied. The seat configuration was in a 2-4-2 setup too, and I had the isle seat of the outside row. The only think to be aware of... If you ever fly into Auckland and make a domestic connection, be prepared to walk. The domestic terminal is a separate building and what seems like a good half mile path between the two. My connection was far enough apart time wise, that I didn't have a problem, it just took a bit to figure out we had to walk to another terminal.
Flying from Auckland to Christchurch was nice. I somehow managed to get booked in a first class seat. To bad the trip wasn't longer. Total flight time was about an hour. Try and get a seat looking west, as you get a nice view of the mountains. My first impressions of the place is its kinda like a Green Denver. Christchuch is on flat land, with big mountains off in the distance. But its obvious they actually get rain here. I visited the botanic gardens here to. I can't believe the size of some of the trees there. I took a bunch of pictures but probably won't upload them until tomorrow. My hotel internet connection is currently for 2 hours, and capped at 30 MB of data transfer, so I need to use wisely. (I should have composed this before getting online. Oh well.)
Tomorrow we go over to the USAP building and get all of our ECW gear (Extreme Cold Weather) and then on Monday (Sunday, in the US) we fly out. I guess that's all I have to report for now, and I've a bunch of e-mail to sort through. Cheers!