Davis Worldwide

Rotorua. Danielle and I randomly ran into a friend in my study abroad while hiking the Tongariro crossing. His car had broken down on the north island and he needed a ride to the airport the following Monday. We were both going to Rotorua for the night and he wanted to attend the Maori cultural dinner. Although we were skeptical and felt the event was a tourist trap, we decided to attend. On the bus ride there Danielle, without me knowing what she was doing, nominated me as a "Chief." This required me to lead the entire bus in several songs, but more importantly when we got to the dinner it started with a ceremonial peace offering where warrior Maori came out dancing around with weapons, sticking their tongues out and yelling chants. This is not really my thing, but as fate would have it I was selected by the warrior to accept the "peace offering" while about 200 other tourist stood around watching this spectacle. The facilitator told me to "walk very slowly and carefully so as not to show a sign of disrespect to the Maori tribe." On the verge of breaking out into laughter I picked up to the peace offering. In the end, the warrior shoved his spear close to my face and then walked away, which meant we could all enter the tribal grounds - HURRAY (I've never felt like such a tourist, but Danielle seemed to get a good laugh out of it)!!