Forklifts and Trespassing

Trespassing
So yesterday night I decide to take short gander over to the La'ie Temple and do a little night time exploration. I arrive around 10:00 go around the back exploring the back and taking the moment to enjoy the stars and the peace and quite. BY the time I head back out, all the gates are closed. I am locked inside temple grounds! There are worse places to be locked in, but high school memories of trespassing just flashed across my mind. So what did I do? What I climbed the gate and fence, jumped into someone else's driveway and then managed to get to the parking lot and walk out. At least I wasn't caught trying to break in. Just break out.

P.S. The La'ie Temple is as beautiful as it looks in all the pictures.

Forklifts

So today I got to play around on a forklift. By play around I mean get trained on how to use one. All the instructions I got were, "Here is where the key goes, this is reverse, this is forward, this is lift, tilt and side to side. Now go lift those heavy things over there and play in the recycle area.

So with my purple shirt, black skirt, and flimsy shoes, I hoped onto that machine and man-handled a forklift. I wish I could have gotten the picture of the construction workers that gawked at me as I drove by them, in the forklift. It was priceless.

"We Are Samoa"

On Saturday I attended The, "We Are Samoa Festival".

It is a competition between different high schools around Oahu. The festival commemorates the Samoan culture by having a number of high schools around Oahu compete in events such as fire making, peeling green bananas, fire-knife dancing, traditional dance, basket weaving, etc.
I think it's so great how much pride polynesians have  for their culture. Pride in ones culture is fantastic to have. But sometimes it can be a hinderance to forward progression. So how does one find a balance between accepting change and the future and holding onto traditions? Still trying to figure this out.

Samoans are known for being the happy people and their jokes are all right up my ally!
Here is one of the dances performed by the high school students. One word: FORMATIONS! Having danced in formations, I will say that I am very impressed.

Also, there is nothing sexier than a man who plays with knives on fire. Just saying. Got to see this as well. It's much cooler in person.

Preconceived Notions

Before coming to Hawaii, I had my ideas on what it would be like. I was technically traveling within the U.S., so I expected to be heading to a more tropical version of any other state in the U.S. The only difference would be a higher population of polynesians and fruit trees lining the streets, since it is a tropical island. Right? Wrong.

So what did I find when I arrived? I had traveled to another world, another country, or so it felt. Yes Hawaii is a U.S. state, has paved roads, electricity, running water, cell phone towers, internet (it's a little menopausal sometimes), grocery stores, but no fruit trees lining the streets. But that is about all the similarity between Hawaii and the mainland.

Hawaii

A completely different culture. It is like stepping into a semi-developed country. Developed, meaning, paved streets, electricity, etc. But the people still live in past. Not a bad thing. Just a fact. The land has been developed but the people hold true to their culture. They embrace the development but also hold onto who they are. It's quite incredible.

I would like to blame my preconceived notions on all the Hawaiians I knew before coming here, but I don't that would be fair. Most of them are "Americanized" and so I assumed that all Hawaiians or Polynesians are the same as as the ones that I'd met.

This Ted Talk sheds some light on why I had the preconceived notions that I had.

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story