Luau

Someone on the trip asked me what a luau was. I didn't actually know since my only exposure to a luau have been from the MIT Hawaiian Club fundraisers and that episode of Growing Pains where the Seaver family goes to Hawaii. So I said you eat meat that has been cooked in the ground and watch a performance.

It turns out I wasn't all that wrong--at least for the touristy luau we went to on Wednesday night. The food was definitely better than the Hawaiian food places I've tried outside of Hawaii. I liked the fried rice and pork. I was warned about poi, so I tried it very tentatively. It wasn't awful, but I definitely wouldn't choose to eat it again.

The performance was interesting enough. I think learning how to hula would be more fun than belly dancing, which seems popular now. They did kind of a history of the island. I kept waiting for a fire dance since I remember seeing that on Growing Pains. I was also looking out for a dance the MIT club did, where as best I can remember and describe, topless men slap themselves (way less scandalous than that sentence makes it sound). Neither was performed. At one point they asked all the honeymoon couples to get up and dance--half the audience got up! It probably would have been more if there weren't a hundred of us there.