How I Spent My Winter Vacation - Part Two

Thursday afternoon, post nap, brought all the reports all over the tv about the plane that was sitting in the Hudson River, and being sort of a disaster junkie I sat in front of those minute (not min-ut, but my-noot) updates over and over for quite awhile until we were alerted locally to ... (insert "Night on Bald Mountain") ... Impending Winds of Hurricane Force!!!!!!!!!!!! Coming Friday-Friday-Friday!!!!!!! Get everything moveable out of your yard and bolt down pets and small children! Power outages expected! Schools to be closed, all sorts of businesses and official offices to be shut down for the day!

Well.

We had been planning to go to the Polynesian Cultural Center on Friday, but "flex" is our middle name and so we quickly decided that a dramatic storm could also be fun in a twisted sort of way. You know, as long as no one was hurt, and since Abby and Orion live in a crater we thought perhaps we would not get the worst of a wind storm. Following a fine dinner and some more hanging out, we went to bed expecting to be up half the night, what with the wind raging and loose bicycles and VW Beetles being tossed around in the street.

But we slept just fine. We awoke to heavy clouds, some rain, but no hellacious 60 mph winds. A call to the PCC was answered wearily, "Yeah, we're open." No one else on the entire island was open, but the show must go on and the assorted Polynesian students were ready. Flexing right back to the original plan, we made ready to go
and arrived, no rain, just before the Long Canoe Parade, which is more clearly the Parade of the Long Canoes. The guy who issued our tickets also gave us each a small tidy red poncho tucked into a little bag, which I thought was unnecessary but accepted to be polite. We were handed over to out tour guide, Park, who was a tiny Korean girl. She assured us she was South Korean and therefore we were safe. Tee hee.

I don't think I have any photos Abby doesn't have, or something very like them, but here are some more anyhow. Some of these are mine and some are David's.
Tonga

Samoa

Hawaii

Tahiti

Fiji

Aotearoa (Maori)

aka New Zealand
To be continued.