My Tongan Holiday
By Dennis, Year 8
Beep beep beep my heart is on a race track as my alarm goes off at 6 am in the morning. Bright and early this is the day that I will finally meet my cousins for the first time and it will be the first time ever going on a plane. I’m only 6 years old and I am traveling to church. This is the first time I have ever met my cousins from my dad’s side. I packed my bags ready to go, my family and I are heading on to the plane and off we go fast as a flash, I am so nervous but happier. As soon as we got out of the airport I rushed to my cousin’s step by step and saying hi for the first time, to me I felt really happy, nervous and very shy, it was very special, but what really made it more special, was when I first met my grandpa and seeing him for the first time, it was heart filling. When I took that first step into the house and saw all my cousins running around, that’s when I knew that I would love it here and there is no better place than Tonga. Every day I would wake up to a fresh sunny day and would have milo, bread, corn beef, and some chicken. My grandpa would always say to me “This is the meal of athletes” and I have always kept that in my head since the first time he said that and in every game and sport I do I think of my grandpa and think of what he said and be the best that I can be, to always try hard and give it my all.
Bright and early on a Sunday morning, the grass is moist, the sun is rising and the day is cool, getting ready for church on Sunday morning. I have church and all my cousins and all my relatives come to church and we all pray and sing. Then, after church a massive bronze bell rings for the end of morning service for the church, and then everyone has a feast. We eat all the Tongan dishes. We gather around the table and we pray for the food, after that all of my cousins and I go out and play some rugby on the brown hard dirt. It would always be me and one of my other cousins running it straight at each other and it was fun. After that, I then headed off to my grandpa and stayed with him for a bit. Then my dad called me over to the back shed to help out with this project my uncle had been working on. It is for my dad’s family carpentry business and it has been there since my dad was little and it is still running. My uncle had been working on this project for a year and it was almost complete, all we needed to do was help carry some timber over and cut it to the right size then put it on and paint it. This project that my uncle is building is for the church and it’s for the minister to stand and preach the bible on a very large stand. My uncle said it would be finished by the time I leave so I would be able to see the finished product.
Bang bang bang as my dad wakes me up in the morning. My dad said to me “we’re going to the beach today, it’s your last day today because we’re leaving tomorrow”, As soon as my dad said that I was devastated that we were leaving the next day. But I couldn’t let that stop me from having such a fun day. We all headed off to the beach, and it was so fun going on the truck because in tonga you’re allowed to go in the back of the truck. So you can hop on the trailer of the truck, also in tonga, there are no traffic lights so everyone works together and nothing wrong ever happens. After the trip to the beach, we made it to the beautiful samaritan beach. It was breathtaking, the sun was up, the water was cool and the sand was brown. We had a fun time playing at the beach from tackling everyone in the water to having a nice game of touch with the whole family, after that we headed home, had dinner and went to sleep.
Monday morning and it’s the day my family and I were leaving, I packed my bags ready to leave, we hopped in the truck and left for the airport. It was a long journey to the airport as we were all sad to leave. We arrived at the airport and were saying our goodbyes. We then finished and put our bags away then my family and I said our final goodbye together.
