Aloha from Turtle Bay, Oahu, Hawaii!
Yesterday I got up at 5:40 AM so that we could get to the temple early and still have time for the beach before going to the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC). We got there only to discover that it was closed for cleaning! So, we meandered around Laie (where the temple is) going to some of my old stomping grounds when I lived here for four months when I was 21. The “Church College of Hawaii” is now called “Brigham Young University Hawaii”. The entrance has changed slightly, as has the campus, but it still felt the same to me.
Next, we drove up to Laie Point, just across from the Laie Shopping Center. The tide must have been in because the water seemed really high to me. The surf was somewhat turbulent because it’s winter. Still, it was absolutely beautiful and to me, very peaceful. I had a little walk down memory lane… I used to go up there and just sit and ponder upon things. It was always a retreat for me. I could still feel that when I was there. I have learned to have a great respect for the power and force of the ocean. Laie Point is one of the places that I learned that.
Because it turned out to be a cloudy and breezy morning, we decided to head over to the pool instead of the beach for about an hour just in case we could catch a few last rays before the end of our trip. Didn’t do us any good!
The Polynesian Cultural Center was a place I spent most of my time when I was young. I lived with seven other girls (three of us were “hauli” – or white mainlanders – and five were Polynesian) on Iosepa Street in the home of a professor for the Church College who was on a sabbatical leave at Brigham Young University in Utah. All but two of us worked at PCC, so I’d often walk over there to visit either my roommates or guys I was dating that worked there. It wasn’t the “fortress” that it is today, and since I knew the security guard, it was pretty easy for me to just walk in. I’d often spend my days wandering through the various villages and talking to my friends. I loved the “shoyu chicken” (teriyaki chicken these days) at the snack bar, and I had it often.
Samoan Village (look closely at the tall right coconut tree - there's a guy climbing to the top).
I’ve been to PCC many times over the years. There were a few things that felt the same, but a lot of it is very different from when I lived here. The villages are about the same as far as what they do there, but it seems there is so much more to the whole complex than what I remember. The basics are still the same – village demonstrations and presentations, canoe rides, pageant of the long canoes, luau, and evening performance. They’ve added lots more shops and other things, however. We did it all and had a great day, in spite of a “misting” around dinnertime. One of my favorite parts was the luau. I finally got ALL my favorite Hawaiian foods, YEAH!!! – kalua pork (a whole pig cooked in an imu, or pit), chicken long rice, teriyaki (shoyu) chicken, taro rolls, sticky rice, lomi lomi salmon, and coconut cake. There was a lot of other food, but I made sure to get the above. I looked rather like a pig myself as I walked back to my seat, but I didn’t even care. I had everything I loved! In spite of no temple session and no sun, all in all, it was a great day!
Carol and Me at the evening performance. They won't let you take pictures of the performance, sorry, the performers were much better looking than me - smile!
Kadi
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