Accelerates' Marae Stay

One Monday morning Accelerate Academy went to Ihenga Marae for our marae stay. But unfortunately we didn't have enough parents to stay overnight. Everyone made their way on to the bus and left to go to Ihenga Marae.When we got off the bus we made our way to the welcoming arch and waited for the Kuia to do the karanga. When the Kuia started calling us on to the marae we walked slowly with respect on to the grounds of Ihenga Marae. Then we took our shoes off and walked into the marae right before us we saw Ken Kennedy standing before us with 2 other ladies waiting for us to sit. Then he started speaking in Maori.After his speech the boys stood up to hongi and the girls stood after.When everyone finished the hongi Accelerate went outside the wharenui to eat morning tea.

When we finished morning and left Ihenga for Te Puia.We walked there in our fitness teams.When we got there we met our guides and they took us to a big tent to eat lunch. Our group had to wait for about 20-30 minutes for our guide. Once we started moving she took us to see the geysers erupting. One of the geysers erupted 40 metres high. Then she took us around the rest of Te Puia seeing the following attractions:
* The kiwi house (They had a fight)
* A place where they put the food
* little houses
* A bird catcher
* Men doing carving
* the type of patterns in the marae people used for kapahaka uniforms
* And a few other fun attractions.

The tour was sadly over but luckily we had a lot of memories to cherish.Then Accelerate Academy jumped on the buses and left to go back to school.

The next day we did a lot of fun activities at school like:
* Doing a traditional item with stick like tititorea.
* Enviro schools
* making harakeke
* Soap carving
* Kaitao values
* kowhaiwhai

After that On Wednesday we went to the buried Village to learn about the village its self and gather information about ancient times and what happened to the village and the villagers at the time of the Tarawera eruption.