Most of the time the clouds obscure the mountains to the west of us. The winds come off the ocean from an easterly direction and the updraft over the mountains causes the clouds to accumulate there and to drop a lot of rain. Every once in a while we get a pretty clear day with lower than normal humidity and the mountains are clearly visible. The island of Oahu is a fairly young island geologically speaking, evidenced by the sharpness and jaggedness of the mountains.

There are always clouds in the sky. I’ve asked a number of locals if there is ever a cloud-free sky and they are unanimous: never. There are a lot of rain showers, but so far in the time we’ve been here, I haven’t seen any lightning nor heard any thunder. It’s just possible that Hawaii doesn’t get thunderstorms??

I’ve talked earlier about the work going on to replace the tile in the fountain pool in front of the Visitors’ Center. The process to get the old tile out was very arduous and took a full week, finally finished yesterday morning. Today they spent the day grinding away the old grouting and smoothing out the surface. I don’t know the full story about the tile problem. The fountain and associated pool are brand new. The pool was filled with water and the fountains started up on March 20th, the day after we arrived here. But there was something wrong with the tile, probably several somethings, so it’s being done over again. The supervisor told me that the process to replace the tile and get the fountain back in operation will take at least six weeks.

Having the fountain under construction changes the entire dynamics for the visitors coming to the center. When the fountains were working, the most popular spot to take pictures was in front of the fountains followed by in front of the huge sign for the Temple. Now most pictures are taken on the other side of the construction area with the Temple in the background. It’s a bit further to walk and some people don’t want to walk that far so they don’t take a picture.

Monday afternoon after our shift at the Visitors’ Center, Nina and I had an assignment to be at the Hale Aloha Luaua exit. Our job was to help direct people to the entrance, keep people from trying to “sneak in”, and to direct people to the bathrooms and the smoking area. There actually isn’t much to do on this assignment.

This is the largest of the luau venues. I think it can seat more than 600 people for dinner. This venue used to be where the night show was put on. A few years ago the Pacific Theater was built for the night show and this place was converted into a luau. One important part of the luau is a show featuring dances and songs from the various Polynesian cultures. The stage for the show is to the right side of the picture. Prime seating (along with the prime price) is front and center. That area was full, as were almost all of the tables. Across the “river” from the stage was the “imu” where the pig was roasted. At the beginning of the luau the pig is pulled out of the ground and with great ceremony brought across the bridge into the luau where the chef slices it up and the guests can have a piece of the roast pig.

We were able to watch the entire show from where we were sitting, which is where I took this picture. The show was a lot of fun and featured a very young boy doing the fire knife dance. He was very good and very entertaining.

The meal is served buffet style. There were eight buffet lines set up and tables were called up eight at a time starting from the front and working to the back. The roast pig station and the dessert stations were in the middle. The lines moved through quite quickly. It was clear to me that the folks running the food service knew what they were doing and had the whole thing down to a science.

There were three luaus on Monday evening, the Hale Aloha (where we were), the Hale Ohana, and the Hale Ku’ai. All together I think they can seat at least a thousand people for the luaus and another two thousand at the Island Buffet and the Prime Dining Buffet (neither of these have a luau show). After our assignment at the luau, which ends at about 6:30pm, we join up with the other missionary volunteers at Prime Dining to have a free dinner. That means Nina doesn’t have to do any cooking and we don’t have any dishes to do on those evenings, a very nice benefit.

The Hale Aloha has two ways out to go to the restroom or take a smoke break. Nina sat at one of the exits and I sat at the other. I have a shirt that matches her muumuu… .

Life is quite tired tonight!