Hello all Tom here again with another update for all our adoring fans. Who appear to be growing at a rapid rate, we were shocked by the fact that over 500 people have viewed our photo album from Mission bay. We don't actually think that we know that many people, between all four of us!!!!!!! So we would be very interested if people could reveal themsleves to us it would satisfy our curiosity.

So when we left you we had actually spoken to other people who are not just the four of us!! This is a big step forward for us lol. Anyway the day after football we were all a wreck, could barely walk we were so stiff. I think this shows just how unfit all of us really are, which is slightly worrying. Still, undeterred by the fact we all looked like old men limping down the street, we headed out for a night out on tuesday night we our new found friends. We met Siggi outside our apartment building and he took us to Shadows, which is like the uni hang out place. The place was pretty cool and pitchers of beer were just 6.50 dollars, which is like 2.80 pounds. Needlesss to say we took full advantage of this price. Throughout the night I consumed 5 of these pitchers and feders consumed 7!!!!! Something he paid for the next day.

We went to shadows particularly because a tuesday night is their pub quiz, which we took part in with siggi, two of his friends who turned up, and couple of other guys who sorta invited themselves onto our team but turned out to be a lot of fun. We started the quiz pretty well but unfortunately we got progressivly worse, which happened at an almost constant rate to the amount of beer we all drank. Still we all did learn a lot, one piece of information that stuck with us was a new word, crapulent. Any ideas what it means? Well it means drunk, which we all were by the time we got up and left shadows. By this time we had all consumed 4 pitchers of beer each and a shot that siggi has bought for us, apparantly it is big in iceland where he comes from, tasted very strong.

So we got up and left shadows, with the night certainly not over. One guy, steve, who lives in auckland and we met at the quiz, suggested that the quickest way to get to the bar/club that we wanted to go to was to go through the park. This may have been true but it was certainly not the safest way to go through. Feders and I stopped to have a pee behind a bush (not together). So the others carried on walking down the path, which i noticed once finished. Needless to say instead of taking the easy and obvious way down the hill we were heading down (i.e. taking the path), I decided to run down the steep grass to meet them. This, as i'm sure you can all guess did not end well. I lost my footing and went slying down the kill, damaging my pride but fortunately little else. Nick put it best when he said that he was watching me and then I just disappeared.

So we got to the new bar, Margaritas, we found out that pitchers here were just 6 dollars, thus leading us to all consume even more alcohol. So the night came to end and we all rolled into the nearest MacDonalds, which are open 24 hours here!!!! What a place, but there are no kebab vans, so swings and roundabouts really. When we were in Macdonalds a hobo started to bother nick about his food, which was uncool so feders and I started to shoo him away but Nick being the nice guy that he is decided to give the guy his chips, because he didn't want them. The hobo went away, very happy. Still Nick was the nice guy that we all believed him to be. When the hobo put the chips down, nick pounced on them on the way out and put them in the bin!!!!! So nick gave to, and stole from a hobo all in the space of about 15 minutes.

So that was our tuesday night, which we all though was pretty awesome and we had made several new friends, all of whom we exchanged numbers with so shall likely see them again before we leave Auckland.

On wednesday we has the perfect cure to a hangover, Alan (my godfather), has invited us all to the four seasons, which is the university restuarant which the students cook for, i.e. to practice. We had a pretty damn good 3 course meal, with a nice cup of tea to end it with, which Alan was disgusted at lol, being a kiwi. We were slightly scared of alan in the kitchen though, as at one time we heard him yell at one of his students in the kitchen as well as dropping slight hints that the food was not prepared to his very high standards, such as over-cooked pork chops. Also the people who served us were also being tested/trained. We discovered this when we had moved on to having tea and we all got given tea cups and suddenly the lady who was clearly in charge of all the students suddenly comes over and starts yelling at one of the students (in front of us which was pretty awkward). Had something to do with one cup being larger than the other and there being no spoons, which none of us had noticed nor really cared about.

Anyway after the meal Alan very kindly gave us a tour of all the kitchens in the university, which is huge. In one building there seemed to be about 8 or 9 kitchens!!! All of which were fully equipped. Twas quite a sight.

So after the tour we headed home to grab some afternoon shut eye, before we embarked on our evening activities. On this occassion we differed on what we planned to do. Nick, feders and pearson all wanted to go the cinema to 10,000 BC, which they have since assured me was an excellant film and I missed out big time.

I myself wanted to go play poker.........again lol. Having missed it last week because of the races. So i split with the guys and arrived at the bar half an hour before the start of the game. By now i get pretty well with the guy who runs the bar/the poker and the girl who serves the drinks. So no need for ID anymore when i go there which is convient. I was still feeling a little dodgy from the night before so i sort of said to myself that i was not going to drink that night. So of course i got into the bar and bought a beer lol. Then 20 minutues later a guy I've gotten to know well from poker walks in and buys me a beer lol. So by the time poker starts I'm onto my third beer and my plan for the night has not gone as i planned.

HOWEVER, i played extremely well and ended up finished 2ND, I was heads up my buddy from earlier, which was cool and at one point I was just 1 card away from winning. Still i pocketed a very nice 72 bucks, which is enough to cover my losses from previous weeks with a bit of spending money. So having done so well my mood was very bouyed and i managed to put away several more drinks before slightly stumbling back to our apartment to find the others having enjoyed the film and pleased i had done so well, as well as being slightly surprised at my state lol.

Thursday was a much quieter day than our previous ones, ben had a shift as a kitchen hand which was cool, except they tried to tell him that he has working he 6-midnight shift as well as the 10-4 one, to which he promptly told them to b***** off. (in polite terms). In the eve we had planned to dine on spag bol, using the remainder of our mince from a previous night, but unfortunately the mince had gone off.......badly. So we ended up getting a take-out pizza, which was very good.

On friday I had to get up at 6am!!! To go do another shift at the langham, which was pretty painful but at least its more money. Plus i love some of the cars we get to drive, although terrified that I might crash one of them.

When i got home I promptly rounded up the troops and we headed off out to go play some more football with siggi and some more guys he had rounded up. Nick stayed at home as he was feeling a bit under the weather, although he has since perked up. We spent a great 2 hours playing football and got to know more guys, of all nationalities including Scottish, Icelandic, German and French. Football is such a social sport, lets all take a minutue to bask in its glory..............

When pearson, feders and I came back we took a dip in our freezing pool!!! Which hopefully will mean that none of us feel too bad tomorrow. Tomorrow we are hopefully going to go to the beach as long as the weather holds and then we are going to go out for a meal in the eve. We've got not much planned for sunday or monday, apart from more football on monday.

And we can all take a breath...................That was a surprisingly long blog, didn't expect it to take so long to write nor for it to be so long in terms of words. We've had a pretty great few days and hopefully we'll have loadz more before we leave Auckland, which is in 2 and a half weeks.

Hope everyone is well back home. xxx