Thursday January 28th visiting with Auntie Mona and the Polynesian Cultural Center

Mona Lovstedt drove over to the north shore to visit me. She arrived around 8:30 a.m. and we drove up to Haleiwa. We talked and laughed and took photos and eventually went to get shrimp from Giovanni's shrimp truck. We also went to the beach (Ehukai) where the Baywatch movie was filmed. The waves were still very high and the lifeguards were warning folks to come away from the edge of the shoreline. She got me back to our house by 11:30, and by 12:30 Ramona, Karl, Bill, Rose, and I left for the Polynesian Cultural Center. This is a facility that celebrates Polynesian culture specifically focusing on New Zealand, Hawaii, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, and Tahiti.  Our rental house is only about 10 miles away. 

This is a big facility with all kinds of shows and entertaining cultural presentations.  We opted for the Ambassador package for which you get a tour guide and also premiere seating for the luau and the evening show.  Our guide was Eeki, a girl from Samoa. We had about 8 other people in our "family."

After visiting New Zealand and Fiji, and watching a canoe pageant and learning the hula,

we went to Tonga. I had honestly never heard of Tonga, and now I'm in love with it.  In our audience was the first NFLer from Tonga, Vai Sikahema. He was being inducted into the Polynesian Football Hall of Fame.  He is now a sports director for an NBC affiliate in Philadelphia.

During the show, they asked for audience participation, and Karl got invited up.  Each participant was supposed to play the drums and repeat the same chants as the guy on stage. Karl was hilarious! One of the other guys that went up was a young man from Japan who was visiting with his parents. We had noticed them earlier because they had a private ambassador tour guide who was translating everything for them. He was pretty funny too. But a cool thing is that there were a ton of Japanese students there that day, so they were going crazy fo "Tokyo."  The emcee called them Tokyo, Texas, and Michigan.

Later in the day we were taking a canoe ride and a canoe packed wit Japanese students trod by and started chanting "Michigan! Michigan!"  And Karl stood up and acknowledged them in Japanese and they went crazy.

The employees are mainly students at BYU Hawaii, which is right down the street. The LDS church operates the PCC.  It was a delightful day.  At 5 pm we went to a luau filled with awesome Hawaiian food and a show.  They had audience participation there too and one of the guys , De Angelo Williams, in for the Pro Bowl go up to hula.

We later went to an evening theatrical presentation which was awesome.  We were tired but it was well worth our money and time.  It was so wholesome and tender. The students were so willing to share their lives. Their cultures are very friendly and warm and family oriented.

I got my 10000 steps in!  We went home and all slept well.