Skip to main content

Christmas Caroling in Hawaii

We went Christmas caroling tonight with a local church that we have found. We've been to this church two times now, and this morning they announced that they would be caroling tonight so we decided to join them. I don't know that I've ever been caroling before.

Quite possibly I did, but I don't remember it. I am not a singer and always considered it a form of torture so I may have blocked out the memories.

We sang lots of traditional carols, but we also sang "Mele Kalikimaka" (which is "Merry Christmas" in Hawaiian). It's probably a tradition to sing it here, but it was the first time I had heard it. It was my favorite song of the night!

We had to use flashlights to see the words. Because it was so dark, there were a couple of unfortunate mishaps. One woman fell and skinned her knee pretty badly. And as we were walking into the parking lot of another building, none of us realized there was a giant mechanical arm which blocks cars without a pass from coming through. Apparently a car had recently come through and the arm stayed up long enough for many of us to walk past without noticing it. Then it came down with a mighty "thwack" on the head of one gentleman in our group. He got quite a nasty cut from it.

Katie, always the shy retiring type, got hold of some bells and added some jingle to the procedings.

Afterwards, we went back to the church for dessert and a "Hawaiian snowball fight".


Since the kids of Hawaii don't have snow to throw at each other, the church lets them ball up paper and pelt each other with it every year at Christmas. You've never heard such screaming. My kids enjoyed it immensely. They all made friends tonight and it looks like we've found ourselves a church home!!!

Comments

  1. I'm surprised you had not heard that song. It is played on the radio here every year. Seems to be one of their favorites. GG

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o...

Ben's Feet

Ben went camping with his youth group this weekend. He said it was the best weekend he's had since we've been in Hawaii, and possibly in his entire life. The one negative part was that he stepped on some coral out in the water and cut his feet up pretty good. He swears it was all dead coral - you shouldn't touch live coral, much less walk on it because it damages the coral. No one ever mentions that it also damages your feet. They just tell you not to damage the coral. Also, coral is a living organism . If you step on live coral and a tiny piece breaks off in the cut, it will continue to grow. Did you see the movie Alien ? If some creature incubates in Ben's feet, then breaks out and eats us all one night, I'm going to be quite miffed. (Make sure you read the inscription on his tee shirt in this picture. It's quite appropriate.)

Luau, Luau

This week we attended our first luau! We went to the luau at the Hale Koa hotel. The grounds were just incredible. There were men playing soft Hawaiian music, the plants and flowers were glorious. There were people in native costumes making headbands out of palm fronds, chopping up fresh coconut for us to taste, handing out flowers for us to put behind our ears and handing out seashell leis to each guest. It was very relaxed and peaceful. This was a Samoan man who kept us entertained during the cocktail hour. He was very funny! Check out those tattoos. He said the tattoos were part of a rite of passage that he had to go through. He said it took fourteen days to complete the tattoo and, yes, it hurt. And yes, everything was tattooed. He demonstrated how to climb a coconut tree using only a bandanna around his feet. They picked people out of the audience and gave them a quick hula lesson. Katie was thrilled to be one of the people chosen and of course it irritated Ben because he thi...