Honolulu City Lights

Last weekend (the 19th), Danielle, Jacqui, and Gabbi picked me up at the airport when I arrived home from Guam (more about that in another post later). Of course I was late getting in, but when I finally made it, we went downtown to see the Honolulu City Lights. Each year Honolulu Hale (pronounced ha-le) is decorated by the city and county departments. We looked at the decorations and took a mini train ride around the grounds that was a lot of fun!

The Hale

Gabbi, Jacqui and I on a cool winter evening in Honolulu...

Santa and Mrs. Clause hangin loose.
Jacqui and Gabbi hangin with Santa.

Our train ride.
Yes, the blocks do spell out mele kelikimaka. Hope you all had a wonderful solstice, christmas, hanukkah, kwanzaa or whichever holiday you celebrate!

Zoo lights

Last Saturday, we went to the Honolulu Zoo for their holiday festival. It is only open to members and their guests and as luck would have it, our good friends Khris and Bruce and their family have a membership. We met them along with their kids Zoe and Christof and our friends Gretchen, Andre, Talulah, Stella, and Hazel.

We explored the zoo a bit, then decorated christmas cookies, visited Santa, played some games, enjoyed the entertainment, and the lights.

Gabbi and Talulah letting Santa know how good they have been this year.

Zoe and Jacqui telling Santa what they would like under the tree.

Jacqui, Stella, Gabbi, Zoe, Talulah, and Christof enjoying a December evening with the lights.


Hamming it up with the flamingos.

First Friday and King Kamehameha Day

On the first Friday of each month, downtown Honolulu has an art night. The art galleries in Chinatown stay open and the Hawaii State Art Museum has events. For June, we found out that the Art Museum event was dance. We sat on the lawn of the Museum ate a picnic supper and watched dance performances. We met our friends Jesse, Dawn, and Harold and had a great evening.


On the way to the Museum, we passed the statue of King Kamehameha. It also happened to be King Kamehameha Day (a state holiday). There were many groups that had presented leis on the statue. they were absolutely beautiful! The smell was amazing as well! We don't spend a lot of time downtown, but it's nice to have easy access to events like this!

Honolulu Festival

We ventured into the city for the Honolulu Festival this weekend. There were a number of stages set up around Waikiki and the Honolulu Convention Center. There was definitely a heavy Japanese influence at the festival as most of the performances that we saw were Japanese.

The first act that we saw was a Japanese drumming/woodwind group that performed a number of songs and did a "bone dance".


We also saw a Japanese halau (hula school) perform.


After sitting in the hot sun for a while, we needed to stop into the Yard House for some treats.

Then we went to the convention center to see the exhibits. We did origami. The girls got a flower (Gabbi) and Cat (Jacqui) painted on their arms. Finally, we watched part of a hula contest before heading back to our apartment.

Gymnastics

The girls tried out a gymnastics class at the Hawaii Academy this week. They had a great time and basically had a private lesson. The gym focuses on tumbling and trampoline and has some students that are world class trampoline gymnasts!

The class was originally supposed to be an acrobatics class from a teacher that we met while hiking at Makapu'u our first week here. Apparently there were some scheduling conflicts with her, so the class was their standard intermediate level. The gym is near downtown Honolulu, so we have to fight traffic afterward. We may try to find a class on the windward side of the island once we get into our apartment.

Storytellers at the Bishop Museum

We had a wonderful time at the Bishop Museum at a Native storytellers program. It included natives from (of all places) Hawai'i, Alaska, and Massachusetts! Their stories, dancing and music were fascinating! It was very interesting to see some of the differences (and similarities) among native cultures that are thousands of miles apart!

The performers helped each other tell stories and performed as a part of the ECHO project (http://www.echospace.org/). Their performances are coming to Massachusetts soon. Check out their schedule and try to make it to a performance!

The Alaskan natives (Anupiaq and Yupik) were wonderful to watch. They had us come up on stage to learn and perform (we'll get pictures from friends as soon as we can)

The Massachusetts representatives were Cape Verdean and Wampanoag of Aquinnah. We enjoyed talking with Jonathan Perry, the Wampanoag storyteller!