Well, the Luau... I must say I didn't take too many photos of the event, because I was way too busy having fun!

But I do have photos from the preparations! Check out the separate page on "Cooking Hawaiian Style".

Here you see Graham, proudly showing off one of the key ingredients of a Luau, a can of Spam... (Lovely Spam, wonderful Spam, etc etc etc)

I have no idea why Spam is so important for a Luau, but I was told by several people that without a can of Spam the Luau cannot happen.

While the pig was in the Sauna (see other page), we spent part of our time in a Luau workshop. One of the things we learnt there was how to braid ropes out of Ti-leaves (those are the same leaves that play an essential role in imu-pit cooking)

It starts by cutting the leaves in the middle (length-wise). Then you take one such half-leaf, shiny side out, fold it and wrap it around your toe. Then you start twisting the two ends the one way and the two twisted ends around each other the other way round. When you run out of leaf, you tie in a new leaf. The ends of these tied-in leaves stick out of the rope and look quite pretty.

You continue doing that till you have a rope up to your navel. Then you can tie it into a loop and have a nice necklace... or you continue braiding till you tired of it. Just make a couple of necklaces for your friends!

Or you make a whole lot of them for yourself.

And what to do with the ropes after the Luau? You keep them of course. Kiki has a couple of them dangling from the mirror in his car. Mine hangs on my reading light at home.

The Luau itself started with a juggling and variety show (I performed too).

Waiting for her turn...

After the show...

(yes I know, I've heard it a few times by now: These patterns do NOT go well together -- see if I care. This happened to be the only clean Hawaiian shirt I had left and that was the only pareau I had with me)

Don't worry -- we had other food too ;)

Yummie: Spam with fresh Coconut milk!