Day 3&4 - Cultural differences

      Today was the second day for us exploreres to be pondering around the town of Rotorua. Rotorua is a geothermic town and has many geysures and steam holes. The air smells like sulfer and gets really foggy at times. On days when there are a lot of clouds in the sky the air tends to smell worse then usual. At first this smell made kids feel very nauseous. Some of the kids who were more immature liked to make jokes like "Who cut the cheese" or "Warn me next time before you let one go!". At first it was kind of funny but then it just became really obnoxtious. This morning I went to Mcdonalds to call my parents, it did not work for some reason. After we went on a duck tour. What was cool about the duck tour is the fact that we were actually able to go out onto the lakes. The bad part was it was especially foggy in the morning and it was freezing! The ducks are known for being used in WWII to transfer  war supplies, many were sunk because they do not operate at high intense levels of speed. After we froze the death on the duck tour we then went to a town called Whaka. That is the shortened name of the town. The real name has 36 letters in it, and the Maori language only has 14. What was ironic is the town was very small for having such a long name. One would think it would be the biggest town in all of New Zealand. The town was known for preserving the Maori way of life and using the steam vents in order to live. The vents and hot water pools were used for many different things.The main thing the vents were used for was cooking food. The Maori people would place wooden boxes over the vent and put their food inside of it. It took about 30 minutes for the food to cook depending on what it was. Also the steam is suposively healthy for your skin . The town has a geysure right in the middle of it, The geysure was pretty sweet. Also they cannot bury their people underground because their is to much volcanic activity. They also have hot pools. They use the pools as a way of bathing and sometimes cooking their food. To cook corn they just throw a sack into the boiling hot water and come get it in a half hour or so. They also have a hot mud pool. the mud is believed to help with cancer and artritus. The people of this town are very smart and use their surroundings to their best of ability. The people that live in this town are very passionate about their past and are more then willing to share their stories about their ancestors.