Patience is a virture (I'm working on!)

I've realized in just the short 24 hours I've been travelling that this trip is going to teach me patience whether I like it or not. Buses, figuring out transfers, waiting in lines (and I swear I am cursed with being in the eternal slow lane), sleeping in crooked positions on planes, not knowing where you are or where you are going, having 7 other roomates to deal with -- all of these things, in my normal life, would irriate me. I'm doing my best to force my brain to reboot and switch from "normal mode" to "travel mode" as soon as possible or I may have to drop a couple thousand on a room at the nearest Ritz and a couple of hours at a day spa! I have a feeling, like any new situation, that this is going to only get better as I go along.
The flight from JFK to LA was really productive - I watched 2 movies, 3 episodes of Californication, ate about 7 bags of free pretzels and peanuts and slept for 0 hours. The flight from LA to Tahiti (Tim only told me on our way to the plane that we had a layover in Tahiti) started the irritation process - in the one hour layover we had to leave our terminal, catch a bus to the other terminal, then run through crowds of people who had the MOST luggage I have ever seen, and eventually sat and waited for our flight (which without any announcement took off 45 minutes later than scheduled.) I had already jumped the gun at this point on taking my first sleeping pill, and after boarding I was asleep before we even took off. The Tahitian airline, Air Tahiti, is a little "ghetto" - they only offer about 5 movies (real quality ones, like Practical Magic with Sandra Bullock and some movie starring Bruce Willis where he's trying to kill human looking robots) that played on a loop, so you'd have to hope you caught one of these classics at the beginning. About 10 hours later we landed in Tahiti and had to exit the plane so they could clean it, which was neat because now I can actually say I have been to Tahiti. It was hot.. that's all I know about Tahiti. 5 hours later we landed in New Zealand and I finally felt like this trip had begun.
We met this little old man on our plane name Warren, who was 90 years old and going to live with his son in NZ for his "last days." He liked Timmy and I enough, well at least me, to offer us to come up to his son's house on the Bay of Islands and sail with them for a day, which I thought was pretty nice. But I've always said "never go sailing with someone" because its the BEST way to kill them without anyone knowing, so we decided to stick to the beaten path instead. We arrived at our hostel around 2:00 local time and got settled into our room - 4 sets of bunk beds filled with two other Americans who are also blogging www.danandjon.com, two Canadians, one Swedish guy and a random asian guy no one has seen since we got here. Tim and I walked around New Zealand, a busy city that seems to me to be a complete mish mash of architecture, from brick to stone, to glass to concrete jungles with sprouting palm trees next to a Dunkin Donuts and Prada stores. We decided not to stay here long, and booked a 21 day bus excursion through both islands starting at 7:50am tomorrow morning. It's with a company called Stray, which focuses on getting New Zealand visitors "off the beaten path" and does a lot of hiking and nature related excursions (which of course, I am excited about.) We ate at a Medterranian restaurant we found in Tim's guide book, which was delicious and cheap because we just didn't think eating at Subway or the 24 Wendy's would really be imersing ourself in the New Zealand culture.
Although they have free fruity punch and a "battle of the sexes"at the Globe bar downstairs, I think it's time for me to hit the hay (I mean, it is 3:20am CT time!) I'm sure I'll hear all about the crazy bar happenings from one of my seven roomates at 2:00 this morning. And don't worry, I'm trying to work on my patience for Timmy's sake.