Luau!

Lots of excitement has gone down in the past few days and will require several posts (since I've only figured out how to put on 5 pictures at a time). First things first, I had my interview on Friday and I thought it went well. I'll find out sometime this week if I got it or not. I've been told it's mine if I want it, but I'm not counting my chickens yet. Anyway, on to the fun stuff.

Rick had been talking about going to a luau forever so we finally decided to go. He picked where we would go--there are several on the island and all claim to be the best (imagine that). We went to the Sheraton hotel in Poipu on the south shore--the only beach front luau on the island. Pretty sweet view if I do say so myself. It's like another world down there--a very touristy world. And a really nice hotel, so it was nice to walk around.

Neither Rick and I had eaten much on Friday since we knew there would be a ton of good food. What we didn't know was that there was also a free open bar. Mai tais are the drink of choice here and from what I could tell they were a mix of pineapple and orange juice and rum. Very good. And they just kept bringing them to us...

This was a learning opportunity--they told us about the Hawaiian folklore and introduced the "king and queen" before we ate. They also had a band playing the whole time and some hula dancing before we were introduced to the food.

I can't remember the last time I ate so much. I loaded my plate with ever thing from Kalua pork, mango chicken, some kind of beef, fruit, taro rolls, mango butter, salad-I even tried the fish-and my plate was heaping full. I tried every dessert they had too. I think that even with the open bar, it's impossible to walk away from a luau with any kind of buzz due to the sheer amount of food.

Then came the show. I'd say it lasted an hour or ninety minutes or so and they did not only the hula but many others including dances from Tahiti and New Zealand. They also had a fashion show on how to wear sarongs (I don't remember the Hawaiian name for them) and more Hawaiian legends. The New Zealand spear guy was cool too, but the fire dancer was awesome.

We had pretty good seats (we got there pretty early) but some of the pictures didn't turn out the greatest because of the lighting. The fire dancer was good but really funny too--he was the life of the party.
That is, of course, until Rick took the stage...