HAWAII!

We're baaaack! Well, physically, that is. I think we're both still on the beaches of Waikiki mentally right now.

I'll skip all the boring stuff about our flights too Hawaii and get straight to the good stuff. (Though, it'll probably be a bit at a time.)

We got to our hotel Friday night at about 11:00 pm Hawaii time. To us, it felt like 3:00 in the morning and after flights and shuttles and getting our rental car and checking in, we were exhausted. And yet, Saturday morning we actually woke up really early. Maybe it was the excitement? We ate breakfast and walked along the streets around our hotel and along the beach until it was time to head up to the Polynesian Cultural Center.

We have about a million pictures of the PCC. (Mitch was excited about being there and taking pictures, I think.) For those that aren't familiar with the PCC, it's basically set up so that you visit presentations from six of the Polynesian islands. Each island does something to show you about life on their island. For example, in Samoa, the men cook for the women so they showed us how to make a fire and how to open a coconut. AND, there was a guy that climbed a palm tree! Then, at the Tonga presentation, they did a bunch of stuff with the drums they use there. In Tahiti, they danced. (BOY, those girls can move their hips!)

Stuff like that.

There was also a canoe parade. Each island had their own canoe that they performed on.


After seeing everything, we went to our luau. This is the only picture of us that we even have from the luau.


The food was just okay. We did the more authentic food and, yeah, some of it was a little weird. The thing is, I'm sure it was good but like... for example, they had sweet potatoes. First of all, I'm used to sweet potatoes with butter, brown sugar, and marshmallows. These ones were plain. Second of all, they were purple. So... yeah. But some of it was good. I liked the pork!

Between dinner and the show, we drove around BYU-Hawaii and the Laie Hawaii temple. The temple itself was actually closed for renovations but we did get to go to the Visitor's Center and walk around the grounds.


Finally, we went to the PCC's evening show. By then it was dark and they didn't allow flash photography so, we don't really have anything to show for that. At the end there was a lot of fire though. Mitch loved that part.

And that was day one. We went home exhausted again but we definitely enjoyed ourselves.