On Monday we had workshops after waiata practice. My cousin Pauline taught some of us to make Maori Bread how my Nanna used to and fried bread which is a lot different here. We had lunch while it was rising and put it in the oven afterwards. Phil went off to the beach in the afternoon and I finished off my bread and had a nanna nap! After a few days, sleeping among all that snoring catches up with you!

That night Rhys gave us all a talk at the marae about different carvings and the significance of all the different parts of the building. It was really interesting and my younger cousins had lots of questions. Afterwards we had a few drinks with my older cousins.

On Tuesday we stayed for one last waiata practice and the boys gave us a haka before we were given a traditional send off. Rhys gave a speech about how good it was that we had come so far and to tell our family back home that they were thinking of them. That we should remember all the love that was shared during our visit and that they hope to see us back, next time with some babies! Then they all sang for us and Phil answered by thanking them all for having us etc. We drove off and they all waved, I was very sad to go. We stopped in at Aunty Amy's house on our way and said goodbye to her which made me even more sad but we will see her again when we go to Gisborne in March for the Kapa Haka Championships.

The drive back to Auckland was not the chilled out sight seeing trip we had expected as the weather was awful and we spent the majority of it being scared our van would be blown off a cliff! We spent the night at Uncle Paul's house with Jody and Violet as he was away and there weren't enough beds at Jody's yet. We had a dip in his spa pool and slept in a real bed for the first time in a while!

The following day we went back to Jody's and did a re-jig of our luggage before returning our campervan and catching our flight to Sydney Australia.