Chapter 10: Luau! Slainte!

We were greeted at the Luau by seashell lei's (again. score!) and led to our seats where we were given "free" Mai Tais and Maui Blues. The music was great and the hostess was awesome. To begin the festivities she got a bunch of people on stage and taught them a hula dance which was fun and hilarious as some people don't know how to use their hips and others really do.

The food was pretty good. Tried mahi mahi and poi, which I didn't think was that terrible, but Sarah made all sorts of face. The better part was afterwards when we went and bough our hollowed-out pineapple full of strawberry daiquiri.

The Tahitian hula began the dancing phase of the night. All of the dancing was amazing. The girls were so beautiful especially, as Sarah pointed out, for the fact that they did not have "perfectly sculpted" bodies. The men were generally tattooed and awesome fun. The guy that led us in the clap chants was a show all of his own. Somewhere in all of this we learned that flowers (for a girl) are worn over the left ear if she is married, engaged, or seeing someone seriously and over the right if she is not. "The bigger the flower, the more desperate... available she is." We laughed about that, but later, having worn our flowers over our right ear because we had thought it was left ear only when married, when we went back to the bar to refill our pineapple, the bartender looked at us for a long moment, then gave us free ($15) tiki mugs. And afterwards, we went to give hugs to some guys for being Irish (Richard the bartender and his brother- "I'm only three quarters, put us together and we make a whole!" - said to Sarah who is a quarter Irish.) and received very jolly free hugs, a kiss on the cheek, and offers to be bought Guinness or Jameson down the street at a bar called Tijuana's. We lived in the realm of possibility for a few minutes, but ultimately chose the pools and Jacuzzis of our hotel. WE talked for a long time there and in our room and eventually went to bed, exhausted.