Living with the Kiwis: Weekend and Monday...busy, busy, busy!

Adam Lambert Glam Nation Tour=Amazing!!

Security highly enjoyed feeding people water from their pumps...in addition to spraying ppl to get their attention

SUPER close to the stage, just one person and the fence in the way!

CRAZY long lines of people waiting for 2 hours before we arrived on the bus and got to go in before them all :)

Starting with Friday night, I met Mami in the city and we ventured out to Danny Doolans again, but we were a bit later than the week before so it was just far too crowded already to really enjoy so we wandered around and tried some other places. We ended up spending most of our time in O'Hagan's which was filled willed an older crowd at the start and they played music like YMCA (which neither of us had ever heard played out before!) and Love Shack, etc. Turned out to be another late night, so went into the Saturday plans on about 3-4 hours of sleep...luckily I'd been getting plenty all week long!

Saturday at noon I met Jenny, Caitlin, Rachel, An and Sabrina by the ferry terminal in Devonport. We're all au pairs who have all arrived fairly recently, Rachel being the most recent who arrived Tuesday! We spent the afternoon wandering around town and ate a cafe outside enjoying the sunshine! We all realized just how strong the sun going to get here, just from the cafe we all got a little bit of color. After thoroughly exploring Devonport (apart from hiking up the hill to see the views because some of us weren't wearing appropriate footwear) we ferried across to Auckland and did some exploring there. Our dinner reservation in Orbit, in the sky tower, was at 5:30 so we had some time to kill before heading up. We found Albert park which was really pretty and walked around there then sat and had some get to know you/story time until it was time for dinner. As it was a gorgeous day, the views from the sky tower were incredible! We had free entry to the observation deck with our dinner reservation so we were able to see everything in the sunshine and then go up and attempt to watch the sunset and see the city all lit up afterward. Unfortunately a long cloud came in, making the sunset pretty much non-existent. Dinner was delicious and the restaurant revolved about one rotation per hour so you get to see the city from all sides. Even though it wasn't cheap, it was definitely a worthwhile experience. We wandered around for a bit after and some of the girls decided to go out, although no one had too much energy after the day. I decided to head home and get a full night's sleep in preparation for my Sunday plans!

Sunday I slept in, woke up refreshed and then watched the kids for a couple hours while Julia and John went out sailing. The competed in a few races (which they won because no one else went out due to not so nice rainy/windy weather!) I headed down for club doubles at 3 but again, the weather presented a problem on the hard courts and Junior Interclub were occupying the 3 turf courts (luckily for their only Sunday game) so doubles was called off this week. I decided I needed some form of exercise so ventured out for a run in the unpleasant weather. Although it was windy and rainy, it was actually not too cold. It was my first run since I've been here and actually went pretty well! I found myself a nice little route. When I got home it was time to shower and get ready for ADAM LAMBERT!! So I booked a ticket for the 6pm bus departure from the city to the stadium. GREAT move. The concert was sold out and there were quite a few buses loads of people that left at 6pm. When we pulled up to the stadium at about 6:30 there were already HUGE lines of hundreds of people wrapping around the building. We heard some people, not even in the very front say they'd already been waiting 2 hours, and we just got dropped off and got to walk right by all of them and head straight inside. We still had to wait until about 7pm for the doors to open to the stage because once they did it was pretty much a free for all, stand or sit where you wanted. Because we (and by we I mean my friend Rachael I met waiting for the bus, who also was attending on her own, so made a bus buddy right off the bat!) managed to get on the 2nd bus we were SUPER close to the front of the line and so when the doors open we just walked quickly up to the stage and had one row of people in front of us and were right in the middle. Perfect location and had an amazing view the entire show. People didn't really even push too much once everything got going, had a tiny bit of breathing room, although it didn't smell too great...It was all very worth it! The opening band was Seth Haapu, a Kiwi singer, (that was his song Bones and here is his newest single Stereotype) who was pretty good, didn't know any of his music but he also did "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars and did a really nice job. Then we had about an hour of waiting for Adam, and after each song ended there was cheering in anticipation...I just told the person next to me, there's no way he's on before 9:30, he'll come on at 9:30 and play until 10:30 (when Seth Haapu finished did 8-8:30). Sure enough, he did exactly that, well his encore song for his bass guitarist brought him to about 10:40. Then we hopped on the bus and headed straight right back to the pickup point without any delays! I'll post a link to some videos I took with my blackberry when I get them on my computer. Unfortunately, I did not bring my camera, just didn't anticipate being close enough to get AMAZING photos! oh well! Memories will have to suffice.

As I was getting ready to go to the concert Libby had all kinds of questions for me, first off was "how did you get those earrings in?" I guess I've always just worn my small cuff ones and she's never scene big ones on me. Then followed with a discussion of me having my ears pierced and when did I get it done, etc. Next was, "why are you looking all pretty?" She first thought that I was going to be IN the concert...haha and couldn't understand that it was going to be just one person performing...I managed to get out the door on time though!

This morning was pretty smooth running, everyone was pretty happy and Libby was in an especially good mood! All of a sudden she's all excited about swimming and the fact that I may start teaching at the place where she takes lessons and has decided she wants me to teach her class! Will work out well and I can give kids a few private lessons of their own before summer starts. She only just got excited about learning to swim because the deal is, she must learn how to swim before she can do sailing races and bigger sails than right out from the house. After dropping the Reuben and Libby at school this morning I ferried over for Yoga, and thought I had a lot of extra time so took the Link bus in the opposite directions, thinking I'd get a nice little tour of the rest of the city that I hadn't seen yet. Well I certainly got the tour!! Much bigger than expected and ended up taking about an hour making me 20 min late for yoga! Fortunately, there was no one there for class, just a few people doing their own practice. So the instructor set me up with my own little sequence to do and was there if I had questions or needed help and came over and fixed my positioning every now and then. And I got to spend extra time in positions I needed more work on. Worked out pretty well in the end!

This evening I went to "Tennis Extreme" at the club. It's a clinic with one coach and 3 players (so 2 more other than myself) and lasts for an hour. Just drills and constant hitting and fitness and a bit of doubles play, a great workout! And it was coached by Mark Nielsen, one of New Zealand's former top players! That was highly unexpected! I knew he coached at the club and ran his program, smash tennis, out it, but doubted that he would be the one doing the adult clinics! He's got lots of juniors to make top dogs! Anyway, it was a great session and felt pretty cool just knowing I was working with such a quality player!

Now for some photos...