First day of School

Here we are walking into class on our first day of school! Ok, you're right, this is staged at the end of the school day, but you have to have a first day of school picture! Class was so fun today, we really didn't do much schoolwise other than learning about the general structure of the school system here in New Zealand. The first half of the day our instructor, Sis Anderton who is half pacific islander pretty much raised in New Zealand, spent three hours just going over the culture here, focusing a lot on the Maori culture. We got to taste some new foods like Marmite, kumaras (sweet potatoes), L&P (lemony soda or "fizzy"), meat pies (exactly that: a pie filled with meat and gravy), and golden kiwis (deceptively normal from the outside, yellow on the inside and much sweeter than the green, SO good). We learned TONS of Maori words along the way, few of which I actually remember. Like Hangi is when they cook meat in a pit in the ground, not to be confused with Hongi is when you press noses together as a greeting (she made us practice that a bunch cause we have to do it in a formal welcoming without giggling as that is the first rule to the Hongi: no giggling.) which I'm probably going to have trouble with since I had trouble with the cheek kissing or whatever when I went to the Polynesian ward with Brock Bolen (he made so much fun of me cause I blushed so much every time!).
Most exciting part of the day: learning a Maori dance! And lots of songs (we have to sing one of those at the welcoming thing too)! Sister Anderton's granddaughter came in and taught us, and I can't keep the moves in order, but its basically really subdued hula dancing, like similar motions but she told us to not get crazy with it, which is hard for me to do :)
First thing we learned though was the twelve days of Christmas: New Zealand! Here are the elements, sung to the same tune, but its much easier to sing if you know how to pronounce Maori vowels. Give it a go!
1. Pukeko in a Ponga tree
2.kumara (NZ sweet potato)
3. flax kits (grass bags, flax grass has HUGE leaves and grow like weeds here)
4. huhu grubs (I don't remember what those are)
5. big fat pigs (self-explanatory, no?)
6. poi a twirling
7. eels a swimming
8. plants of puha (NZ version of a dandelion)
9. sacks of pipi (pronounced pee pee although no one else seemed to find that funny today... pipi are clams)
10. juicy fish heads (Maori delicacy, I'll pass)
11. haka lessons (just check out the subtitles)
12. pui pui swinging (don't know this one either)

Hope everyone else had a great day in their own special way as well :)