My first post

Hi everybody I chose to create a blog to update people at home in germany in what's happening in my life down here in New Zealand, and maybe other people might get interested in my thoughts about living in the southern hemisphere. To start of I should probably tell a bid about myself. I am Jochen a 29 year old german, who started a PhD in Physics at the University of Auckland in february this year. For those of you, who are interested I am doing my PhD in the field of nonlinear fibre optics, I might post some more details later, but I can't be bothered ATM. The last couple of days have been quite nice, I went down to Turangi with a couple of friends, which is close to Tongariro national park and also the selfproclaimed troutfishing capital of the world. I was introduced into the concept of flyfishing by my friend Bo. He is from Norway and has been flyfishing for quite a while. After a couple of hours I kinda got the hang of it and at least managed to cast roughly into the direction I wanted to. The first day was really slow, none of us even had a take, but it was still fun, the weather was great and it was just nice to be out of the city for once. Casey another friend of mine(he's from Texas), took a nonvoluntary swim when trying to cross the river at some rapids, and loosing his footings, with the waders on the slippery rocks. It was quite hilarious. The next day was a bid better fishingwise, I had at least a take, although it just took of my hook, and we also saw some trout alng the river, so we knew they where there. On sunday we went out fishing for a last time as we planned to leave that day. I caught a 1.6kg rainbow trout. It was a pretty amazing feeling suddenly having the fish pulling at the line. My heartrate went up quite a bid. It was quite a fight getting the fish in as well, as it put in quite a fight. As Bo didn't catch a fish and he will be leaving on tuesday next week, he decided to stay longer, which eventually let to all of us staying another day. The dinner that night was awesome, nothing quite as good as fresh fish. Bo did a great job cooking it. Bo was struck with really bad luck that afternoon, breaking one of his rods and Casey loosing half of his other one. The next day I had another fish on the hook, but it got away just when I was reeling it in. The trip back was awesome, we did a short detour, to the westcoast, with some great beaches. It's all black sent, which really looks kinda weird, but has a strange beauty to it. On monday we went out to celebrate my birthday with friends, very good thai food, if you guys ever come to Auckland, try out Mai thai. Yesterday it was back too work. Went to see Ong-bak with Casey and Bo, pretty cool martial arts movie, amazing fighting scences. Nora my girlfriend has two important exams today, so I really keep my fingers crossed. OK that was it for my first post, I try to write more regularly from now on, so posts don't get that long.