On Friday, the 17th we were finally given our assignments at the PCC. Elder Rappleye definitely has the harder assignment. He is working in the motor pool, but he has to do double duty because he is replacing a senior couple, not just one person.
He is in charge of all the office duties and record keeping for the motor pool and also work on the vehicles as time permits. He is not too keen about the office work, but he does like chatting with "the boys" that are working in the motor pool. There are 3 other senior missionaries working there - Jim, Mark, and Dan and 2 service missionaries - Alex and Bry. So he's got a brotherhood going on there. Here is Elder Rappleye in his office with Alex. Also a picture of some of the work area for fixing and maintaining the vehicles. I think there is the same amount of space off to the left of the picture where more carts and vehicles are parked.
They decided to put me in the Food warehouse. My official title is purchasing agent for the PCC's food warehouse. I do all the food orders for the luaus and restaurants at the PCC.
My duties are to check inventory in the chill areas and dry areas, input the numbers for the items on hand. Then Kalo, another employee determines the number of supplies that need to be ordered. When the numbers are in, I make a purchase order for each vendor with the items needed and email them to each vendor. Some days are busier than others. I place the orders for all the leis that are given to the guests which night at the luaus as well. There is another sister missionary, Sister Jones, that is in charge of the receiving of all the orders. Then there are several students that work at the food warehouse. They do all the heavy lifting and run the forklifts to put the orders away. The best part is that I don't have to go into the big walk-in freezer to count inventory. Also, a nice perk is that for lunch, the kitchen puts out the leftovers from the luaus and the kitchen staff and food warehouse staff can have whatever is left over for lunch. The picture to the right is the food warehouse building. This is where all the big food trucks back in and unload the orders. The picture below is me sitting in my office at my desk.
Friday was training day. A lot to learn, but hopefully we'll pick it up quickly. The hardest thing for me is sitting at the computer for 4 or 5 hours straight. I would rather be up and moving. But everyone has been very helpful and patient.
Right now our schedule for work is 8am to around 2pm, Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. The PCC is closed on Wednesdays during the school year, so the students that work at the PCC have a day for classes, homework, studies, etc. In the summer when school is out, we will be working on Wednesdays. But for now, it's nice to have Wednesdays off to go to town to shop or sightsee. That leaves Saturday to do house cleaning, laundry, and/or other activities around Laie or the North Shore.
Saturday, the 18th was a super fun day. They let us see the Polynesian Cultural Center as a tourist. We went on a tour with a tour guide all around the center visiting the different islands just like the tourists do. Our tour guide, Toa, a student at BYU-H from Tahiti, spoke very good English and made the day fun. Here we go with a photo dump, lots of pictures of the PCC.
Entrance to the Polynesian Cultural Center
The beautiful grounds at the PCC. The picture to the left is the main waterfall. There are several other waterfalls all around the center.
Here we are in the PCC before our tour began. Do we look like tourists? Except you can see we were wearing our PCC badges.
This is our tour guide, Toa, from Tahati.
The first island we visited was Hawaii. The red and yellow instrument in the dancer's hand is a uli' uli, a traditional percussion instrument used in hula dancing. The gourd you see in front of the stage is a ipu, another traditional percussion instrument.
In the picture on the left, the dancer is using ili'illi stones. You can't see them, but they are in his hands. They hold two stones in each hand and click them together. The stones are made of lava rock. Water running over the stones have smoothed and rounded them to the perfect shape.
Next was the island of Tahiti, of course our tour guide's favorite. The dance presentation was a lot of fun. They had the female dancer dance first and invited all the females in the audience to stand and taught them how to dance. Then they played the music, and everyone got to dance.
Then the male dancer performed, and they had all the males in the audience stand up and taught them how to dance. The nice thing about being the photographer is that I got a picture of Elder Rappleye doing the dance, but sorry, not sorry there is no picture of me.
Next up was Aotearoa, the Maori name for New Zealand, "The Land of the Long White Cloud".
The "poi" is the white balls on a string that the women are swinging around as they dance and sing.
The carvings on the posts of the meeting house all depict actual ancestors of importance, like tribal chiefs. Several of the performing students pointed out which carving was their ancestor's depiction.
The stick dance, picture to the right, starts with them sitting and tapping the ground with them and tossing them back and forth between each other. Then they stand and tap them together and toss them back and forth. It's a really fun dance to watch.
The next island we visited was Samoa. There, we learned that the men do all the cooking in Samoa as a way to honor the women. Sounded pretty good to me since my husband doesn't do any of the cooking at our house. We got to taste breadfruit, which is a very common food eaten in Samoa. It tastes like potatoes but is healthier for you than potatoes.
The performance in Samoa was great. The women danced first and then the men. The drums were loud, the dancers were shouting loudly. They are very joyous and exuberant when they dance and sing.
Watching them climb a coconut tree is so amazing. They can scamper up to the very top so fast!
The island of Tonga was the last island we had time to visit. It is the only Polynesian island to have been independent since the beginning, never colonized or conquered by another country. They are ruled by a king, King Tupou VI. In Tonga we tried our hand at spear throwing - we were not very good and learned to weave a windmill with coconut leaves.
We did not get to see the performance in Tonga on the day we were on the tour, but I went back one day after work and watched the entertaining show.
The Tongan drums are called Nafas. This is an audience participation performance kind of like in Tahiti, only a few chosen audience members get to come up front to dress as warriors, try to dance and chant like a warrior, and try their hand at drum beating. The drum master is very good at making the audience laugh and enjoy the efforts of the volunteers.
The only island we didn't have time to visit was Fiji. We'll have to go back sometime to explore that area. A definite perk of serving at the PCC. After work, we can go into the center because we have our badges on and revisit any area we want.
We got to enjoy a wonderful luau experience in the Hale Aloha. The picture to the left is the entrance to the luau, after dark. Hale means house, and aloha means welcome, acceptance, and love. I did not get any pictures of the performance they did while we were eating. We were too far away from the stage and none of my pictures turned out.
After the luau we had a little bit of time to just look around. We chose to go to the Hawaiian Journey theater and watch a short film about the Hawaiian Islands with lots of stunning scenery to view. It reminds me of the Soaring over California ride at Disneyland, except that you are just sitting in a chair, but it feels like you are in a paraglider soaring over the lush green islands of Hawaii.
At 7:30pm, we watched the Ha, Breath of Life show in the Pacific Theater. It's a amazing show that features all the different island cultures in dance through a story of life of a Polynesian child. It includes fire knife dancers that arWe very, very good. We were not allowed to take pictures of the show, but the picture I have above is after the show. If you wanted to, anyone in the audience could go down on the floor and visit with the cast members. It had been a long day and we had 9am church, so we chose to just go home. It was great to see what the guest experience is like, so that when we assist with the "Ask Me" or luau, we will have a better idea of how to help the guests have what they like to impress on us, a WOW experience.
Map of the Polynesian Cultural Center
The mission assigns each senior missionary a certain ward to attend and serve in. We are not allowed to hold any callings in the ward, but we can assist the Bishopric in helping them minister to the needs of the members of the ward. Our assignment is in a young single adult ward on campus, YSA 10th ward. They meet at 9am in the Heber J. Grant building. There is a lot of different nationalities represented in the members of the ward, from all the Polynesian islands, the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, the mainland, India, and Brazil to name a few. It will be challenging to learn all their names because the names are not normal names we usually hear in the U.S. They also told us that at the end of every semester, a lot of the students move around to different dorm locations to be with friends, or get into an apartment with a kitchen, etc. which puts them into different student wards, so we will be always meeting new students and having to learn more names. Wish us luck.
Holy cow! What fun times.
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