On our last Sunday we went back to Aloha Community Church at Ewa Beach. It was nice recognizing people from the week before, and the sermon was great! Our students led the worship songs.
After church we ate a quick lunch and headed to Aloha Stadium to buy souvenirs at the Swap Meet! We got a lot of good deals...bought so much we had to buy a suitcase to take it all home in. Ha! We got really hot. And it was the only day I forgot to use sunscreen, so my shoulders burned.
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| Woodcarver |
From there we drove to Waimanalo Beach where we could see a lighthouse and Turtle Island.
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| Can you see the lighthouse on the hill? |
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| Turtle Island |
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| I wish I could truly capture the color of the water! I fell in love with it. |
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| Red Crested Cardinals |
Next we started the hike up to the lighthouse. When we found out it was 2.7 miles each way, we turned back at the 2nd lookout. But we still can say that we stood at the Eastern and Western points of Oahu!
After that it was finally time for our luau! The luau was given by the same family that gave us the tour of the macadamia nut farm--which means they were entertaining, educational, and hilarious!! When we first got there, we had activities all around the area we could choose from. Getting "tattoos," making fire, spear chucking, a stick game, weaving headbands, hula lessons--and of course there were souvenirs for sale.
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| Mike made smoke! |
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| Hang glider! |
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| You can barely see the lighthouse again in the distance- |
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| This little girl made these and demonstrated how they're used--she was really good! |
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| The stick game |
Eventually the chief blew his shell and they uncovered the pig.
Then it was time to eat!
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| Dinnertime music |
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| The purple goo is poi. Um...not my favorite |
It started raining right after we got our food, and they gave us ponchos.
Then the real show started!! Dancers performed dances representing several different Pacific Islands. They were really good! I took a lot of pictures that I'm going to share. I'm disappointed that they all look so much the same, because the dances were all so different! If you're interested you can look up "Chief's Luau at Sea Life Park" on youtube - there are lots of videos posted. I loved it.
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| These girls moved their booties so fast!!! |
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| This guy acting like he was from New Zealand made some weird faces!! |
One of my favorite things was when he called people, including two of our guys, up on stage to do the tipi tipi. It was so funny!!
The fire dancers were pretty amazing, too.
We said good-bye to the sea turtles on our way out, but that was NOT the end of my day!
On the way to the luau is a VERY long tunnel:
When you leave the tunnel you're on a VERY high, very long bridge. We left the luau and went across the bridge and through the tunnel, and were almost to Honolulu, when Mike called me and asked me to find a McDonald's on the GPS. I got my navigator to put it in, specifying "on current route," and she said to take the next exit. My phone wouldn't work to call Mike, so I pulled in front of him and exited, but he didn't follow me. Turns out that was a good thing, because the exit put me back on the highway we came from with no way to turn around until we had gone back through the tunnel and across the bridge! Ten miles out and ten miles back! And of course then I noticed I was almost out of gas! Mike's group made it back about 45 minutes before us...but we made it back and I slept great that night.
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