Monday 8th September 2008

Today we all got up early (well,most of us) and after a light brekkie headed off to Laie to the Polynesian Cultural Centre. We stopped off at a local supermarket to buy some food to make lunch with e.g bread, chicken, lettuce, tomatoes etc... That shopping trip turned out to quite an exciting event for the students as they could not believe their eyes when they saw the variety and the sizes of packets of biscuits, chocolate bars and drinks and how cheap they were compared to NZ. Well, of course they hadn't converted prices to the NZ dollar but they were still blown away to see all their favourite snack foods available for so little. I don't think that the supermarket staff had ever seen a group of people so excited about doing grocery shopping before!

After everyone had stocked up on their favourite snacks etc... we went on the Polynesian Cultural Centre. We were welcomed on to the New Zealand marae (which is beautiful! of course) and had something to eat before the centre actually opened for business. We went around PCC doing cultural activities - Tone, Nicole, Nofoaga and Fetu tried to make fire in the Samoan village the traditional way. Nobody actually made fire but Nicole swears that she saw smoke rising from her piece of wood - unfortunately,she was the only one who saw it. Tone and Fetu were up on stage raising the Mana College banner high for all to see as they demonstrated a Samoan ipu popo (coconut shell) dance.

Quite a few members of our group received a traditional tattoo from the Fijian and Tahitian villages (the washable kind for those of you who are wondering). It was such a great experience to wander into villages where people from each culture would be teaching traditional dances, handicrafts, performing dances, preparing food the traditional way. We all watched the canoe pageant as each Pacific island group floated down the lagoon/river and performed their traditional dances and songs. There was a even a little canoe which sold icecream to everybody watching before the pageant. After the canoe pageant, we had a ride in the canoes and were given a informative and fun tour of the whole centre as we floated by each village.

At five o'clock, we all met for the 'Luau' which was a dinner with a variety of Hawaiian food e.g purple taro, raw fish marinated in coconut cream, pork and chicken and salads. There was great entertainment during this dinner. Tone was again up on stage doing a dance with other volunteers to the song 'Pearly Shells'. There was a birthday call and all the 'September babies' stood up to have the crowd sing 'Happy birthday' to them - our very own Renee Horua stood up as well and turned bright red to have over two hundred people sing happy birthday to her! It was great. The last event of the night was the show 'Horizons - where the sea meets the sky'. This show was spectacular and featured all the Polynesian island cultures performing their traditional dances and songs. It was truly an amazing night for all of us. Tomorrow we get up at 5am to get ready to go to Kahuku High School to spend a day there.

Messages from our crew:

Katrina Edwards sends her love to her babies. She is having a great time Kriselle but she is missing you all. Shoneece is having a wonderful time.

Renee wants her Mum not to worry about her as she is fine. She misses everyone back home and was looking around the shops figuring out what to buy everyone!