Consumers

Without a phone, you quickly realize how much you need one to communicate, especially when you're in a new city and trying to contact places for rent and set up accounts that need a phone number. We successfully got new SIMs ($5 each) and the $19 a month plan which has 500 MB of data, 100 minutes to NZ and Australia numbers, and unlimited texts to those numbers, plus free weekend calling to other Vodaphone numbers. We're planning on using the Viber app to call and text U.S. family and friends since it works over wi-fi and is free, so we shouldn't need to pay for international stuff.

Next we went to K-Mart so I could buy a hair dryer. $24! But I desperately need one since it's winter. K-Mart has all of the basic essentials that we'll need to furnish a place (bedding, kitchenware and appliances). It even has cheapily made cat condos for our cat! We went to a third supermarket - Pak-N-Save - which turns out to be more like a Walmart with everyday low prices, and most of their prices did beat the other two grocery stores which is good.


We got lunch at So Yo frozen yogurt: donut-flavor and chocolate with a swizzle stick and two chocolate biscuit bars. The price per ounce is about twice as much as as home. It's $2.99 per 100g which is about 3.2 ounces. They had a cute upstairs seating area. I've noticed the bathrooms here are small, even the sinks. There's hardly enough room to put your hands under the faucet.

Paper is a fortune here. Spiral notebooks are around $4-5. Yikes! I will have to use paper very wisely. Books are also very expensive. A new book by the Dust author was $36.99. I think price will finally end up converting me to e-books.


We chose Pizza Hut for dinner - $8 for a "large" pepperoni lover's. It was not the large size we're used to, but it was almost enough for two people. We ate it in the grass like bums since it was a delivery place only. The crust was pure Pizza Hut; the pepperonis weren't cooked very much but I didn't mind as much as D.