Skip to main content

The Bishop Museum

Today we explored the Bishop Museum in downtown Honolulu with some friends of ours.

The Bishop Museum is home to the world's largest collection of Polynesian artifacts.

It was built in honor of Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last surviving descendant of the Kamehameha dynasty. Many family heirlooms from the royal lineage are now on display at the museum.There are many displays that the adults were truly enthralled by:


Ancient tribal carvings

Ceremonial masks

Costumes for ceremonial dancing

Mourning dresses



One of the problems with going to a museum with Kerry and the kids is that Kerry likes to read pretty much every word about every item on display.







He is a fiend for history knowledge and is always seeking to add trivia facts to the already extensive historical info in his brain.






The kids usually whiz through a room, look at all the items on display, read very little, and then go park themselves on a bench until Kerry is done.







Fortunately there is plenty to entertain the kids as well:

Pretending to be eaten by a giant shark



Laughing at what some poor shark got named


Marveling at handmade fish hooks



An actively erupting "volcano".

Cool representation of the ocean food chain


Slides and silliness


3-D Mountain ranges






Riding giant snails

Then Kerry said, "Let's get a picture of you and me on the snail."

In retrospect, this picture looks dirty.


Look at this picture of us instead.


Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 15, 2009 at 7:29 PM

    Hey you guys its Kimberly. Wow!!! HAWAII!!! You guys havent really changed muched. Amy stay strong and remember what Kerry is fighting for... Hope He comes home safe!!!! Tell everybody I said Hi and that I miss them, Love you

    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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
7 comments
Read more

Japanese Fishing Shrine

Here's an interesting little spot we stopped to see. I'd passed this many times before and had never stopped to see what it was. Since GG and Sherry were here, we decided to check it out. There is a shrine of some sort with a statue and a carved rock. There was no information on sight as to what it is that I could find. There were flowers, food and incense left around the base of the shrine. There was a ceramic statue and a rock with a figure carved into it. None of the food was old or rotting (although plenty of it had clearly been pecked by birds) and the flowers were all fresh which made me think it must be cleaned and cared for on a regular basis. After we got home, I did some research and found this article about it from the Hawaii Star Bulletin, our local newspaper (I have edited out some bits, but otherwise the article is unchanged): "Maintenance" of the monument has been assumed by a group of Vietnamese Buddhists - Shingon Shu Hawaii, the Buddhist temple th...
2 comments
Read more