Polynesian Cultural Center...

A while back I went to the Polynesian Cultural Center when Luke and Michael were in town.  The PCC is a really popular attraction on O'ahu.  It is run by the Church of Latter Day Saints (ie. Mormons) and is attached to BYU's Hawaii campus.  The PCC acts to educate people about the different polynesian cultures while also serving as a way to fund BYU's various student programs.  The PCC highlights a few of the 1000's of islands considered Polynesia.

When you think of Hawaiian hula dancers, what do you picture?  Girls in grass skirts and coconut bras doing wavy dances?  Well, you'd be wrong.  Native Hawaiian dress, even for hula dancers, is more of a skirt and strapless kind of top.  Men are just as active in hula dancing as women too.  There are two pictures of their native dress below.

Trivia: In what island did grass skirts actually originate from?  (sorry...no coconut bras though)  Answer is at the bottom.

I don't know near enough about all of the different islands, so I won't even try and tell you.  I'll just add snippets in the captions of things I actually know.

Oh yeah!  Family and friends back home: I'm headed back to visit next week.  Super excited!  I'm headed to the mainland this week for some corporate meetings, but then flying over to Natti-KY after that.  I'm only back for a short bit, but hopefully I'll see many of you! (except for Moose because he's dead to me...out of town all of a sudden the few days I'm in.... coincidence? hehe)

Wall of coconuts: My favorite picture of this post.

I visited the area of Samoa first.  There's Luke ahead of me.

That guy's really doing that!  Climbing a coconut tree during the Samoa show. 

Then he came down and posed for pictures.

I'm spying on this little romantic basket weaving encounter...no really, they were basket weaving! 

I just thought the Fiji sing looked pretty neat.

Hummm...wish I could tell you what this is, but it was a neat little building. Obviously I didn't learn very much this day, but in my defense the previous night (as Michael already mentioned) was the night of 2 mai tai's as big as your head with 151 toppers...so I wasn't really in the learning mood this day.

Here's the royalty for the canoe parade of islands.

People in the native dress of Samoa.

This is one type of native dress for Hawaii.

Grass skirts...native dress for Tahiti.

Here is the common native dress for Hawaii...sorry for the blurriness.  The Hawaii area was actually under construction so we were just crammed into a small tented area.  As a result, the Hawaii show was the least exciting.

These were some show people during an island wedding (I think it was the island of Aotearoa) 

After going to many of the various island shows, we went to a luau.  After the luau we had tickets to the night show (which was pretty neat but you aren't allowed to take pictures during it, so you don't get to see it unless you come to visit).  While waiting for the show to begin there was this teenage music crew, Bahuru, that was playing for all the visitors.  They were really impressive with their odd xylophones of various sizes made from wood and PVC pipes.  Here's a video of one of their songs.

Trivia: In what island did grass skirts actually originate from?  (sorry...no coconut bras though)
Answer: Tahiti

Mahalo for visiting.