We stayed at the marae from the 23rd. As we were among the first there we helped make the beds in the wharenui, meeting house, where the family sleep and met everyone as they arrived.

The carvings and paintings inside and out all depict our ancestors and every aspect of the building has a story behind it. I love waking up in the morning and lying there looking at all the faces and patterns.

Christmas eve was spent welcoming family who were arriving and hanging out with my cuzzies, aunties and uncles. The communal living means helping out wherever and whenever you can to get meals cooked and cleared away etc.

On Christmas morning we were woken up by Aunty Maureen with presents! We had a Christmas tree in the Wharenui and all the presents were underneath it. Each person had to get up and collect their present from Aunty Mo. Phil and I had cards from all the family with some dollars in, thank you! And Aunty Teia had bought us a ticket for the Christmas lotto but we didn't win :o( hehe When we got up the hangi was being prepared by some of my cousins. It was hot work and we watched as they lowered the food baskets into the ground and covered it all back up to cook. After this we had a meeting where a few rules were laid out and 'the stick' was given out. There's a family tradition of issuing fines at reunions which means that adults get punished for naughty things like swearing or snoring too loudly etc. The person with the worst offence each day gets 'the stick' and is the sheriff for the following day. As we had travelled the furthest we were given 'the stick' first and made sheriffs. There were also some visitors who we welcomed. They had come from Wellington but were part of the Matete family who lived up in the hills near Gisborne. They had heard we were having a reunion and decided to pop in and share some whakapapa, geneaology with us. Christmas lunch was delicious and followed by a typical afternoon of lazing around. My cousin Rhys who knows a lot about our history told us some interesting stuff about our marae. Dinner was leftovers and we had a masquerade disco in the dining hall afterwards.