Aloha from Hawaii!

Aloha to all our whanau, friends and staff of Mana College

Sunday 7th September 2008, we all met at Mana College at 1pm to wait for the bus that was to take us to the airport (kindly sponsored by NCS and Tama Coker!) There were a lot of hugs, tears, good wishes. Thank you to everyone who came down for your best wishes. We would like to say a big mahalo to Mrs Tuite for coming down to see us off at school and for her words of encouragement. Thanks also to all the families and to the wonderful Mrs Morley who came to the airport to see us off.

We left Wellington airport at 5.30pm on an Air New Zealand flight and everyone got a buzz to see that we had a mention in the Air New Zealand quiz that was shown on the screens during the flight. The quiz question was, 'Which city in the Wellington region is home to Mana College?'. You should have heard the roar of support from our lot when that came up on the screens. Those of you who are league fans will be interested to know that we were on the same flight with Stacey Jones and Tawera Nikau. On landing at the domestic terminal, we then ran to catch the free shuttle to the international airport so that we could make our 8.30pm flight to Honolulu. Everyone was nervous but excited to be going, especially those who had never even been on a plane before.

The flight to Honolulu took nine hours and there was plenty of entertainment for students on board - movies, music to listen to, each other. Tone's camera never stopped flashing during the flight so don't be suprised if you see photos of people sleeping with their mouths open in an unauthorized blog somewhere in cyberspace.

At 3.30am (NZ time) while you were all having lovely dreams, we were being woken up by the flight attendants to get ready for breakfast as we were two hours away from Honolulu. Needless to say, we all woke up and were ready for brekkie as if we had been living in Hawaii all our lives!

Arriving at Honolulu airport was a real experience in itself. We were guided like sheep and herded on to these shuttles to another terminal where we had to go through Customs and Immigration. We were getting ready to take a photo in front of this mural when a Japanese/Hawaii woman in security uniform came over and told us to 'MOVE' downstairs to be processed. There was no messing around with airport security, that was for sure! We all had our photos and fingerprints taken just going through immigration, it was okay going through Customs after declaring that we were not in Hawaii for 'terrorist' activities. We didn't see a duty free shop during our march through the airport, we will look for it when we leave. If there was anything to learn from the airport experience, it was to value what we have in New Zealand and not to take things for granted because things are very different here. Hopefully the students will feel more appreciative of what they have back home because we should all be.

Anyway, back to the blog - as we waited for our contacts to arrive with the vans, we saw more limousines go past in that time than I have seen in the past five years in New Zealand. After dropping our bags off at the hotel, we drove to Kane'ohe to have lunch which was hosted by the lovely Fiaui family. It was an experience for the kids to be driving on the 'wrong' side of the road. Fortunately we had two of the best drivers anyone could have asked for who did a great job getting us around the island on our first day without too much trouble.

While all the other Mana College students were sitting in their classrooms for Period 3 classes, our lot were sitting on a deck eating fresh pineapple, watermelons and other delicacies amongst hibiscus flowers in Kane'ohe. We sang a waiata and thanked the family - Loia and Cindy Fiaui for their hospitality and then it was straight on to Laie where we were hosted by BJ and Hyrum Smith - Mrs Hitchon-Parekura's O'ahu contacts who had helped with most of the bookings here.

We were very fortunate to meet with many Maori and Hawaiian families who lived in the area who had come to meet the group. We enjoyed a lovely meal there as well. The kids were keen to try the Hawaiian mango bread and chopsuey, chicken etc... We left Laie and went to our hotel (Maile Sky Court Hotel in Waikiki) and checked into our rooms before the kids had a bit of time to swim in the pool and then it was reflection/diary writing time and off to bed. Tomorrow, we are up early to go to the Polynesian Cultural Centre in Laie for a powhiri and then it will be an all day tour of the different Pacific island villages where the students will get the chance to try their hands at different Pacific activities e.g Samoan fire knife dancing, Tongan spear throwing, weaving etc... We will also be attending the evening show and will have dinner there at the luau. Next blog will be all about the events of the day. So far, so good! Everyone is really tired though. Catch up tomorrow!