Arrival in the promised land

Sometime during the night we crossed the equator and into the southern hemisphere (I for the first time).  After a pretty decent (at least by airplane coach standards!) night and temporarily "losing" one day of our lives (Dec 29 just didn't exist), we arrived in Auckland to a beautiful sunrise through some clouds/fog.

Auckland, NZ

As the plane touched down, they played a song called "Strolling in a summer wonderland," set to an obviously recognizable tune.  It was almost as if they were taunting those of us with deficient sun tans!  In the terminal, the first thing we saw was a Burger King with a cricket match on the tele and we knew we weren't in Kansas anymore.
I have to say that the Kiwis run a pretty decent airline and also appear to have a real sense of humor.  The safety video on the plane was more like a series of comedy sketches than a serious safety presentation.  Upon arrival in Auckland (after Susan had to go though "special" pat-down-type screening for the THIRD time on the trip), we checked the departure board to locate our gate, only to find our flight status listed with the simple command "relax."  They don't post gate info until about an hour before departure -- perhaps to keep you in the shopping area a bit longer?  In any case, I don't think you'd ever see the word "relax" posted anywhere in a US airport.
While everything has gone pretty smoothly, it's good to have only about four more hours to Melbourne where we can recover and relax a bit before the rest of the adventure.

(Later today)  After 35 or so hours, we arrived in Melbourne about 15 minutes late and passed smoothly through immigration without any human contact--the passport was scanned and then facial recognition software compared our picture with the passport data,  David and Beth were on hand to collect us and keep us active and awake so we'll get back on schedule a bit faster.  I've already made two directional errors which I need to work on correcting.  First, I misjudged the direction the plane was landing because I forgot the midday sun is to our NORTH, not the south(fortunately, it does still rise to the east and set to the west).  Secondly, I looked right first before stepping off a curb but fortunately there were no cars coming.  I hope some of these errors will correct themselves before I start driving on the left!