Sunday is a Day of Sunburn and Samoans

It's true, I did get sunburned today. After breakfast, the Intercultural Class went to the Swap Market in the stadium here on the island. It reminded me of Ecuador a little, the different cultures, the walking around in a market atmosphere. There were lots of trinkets and t-shirts to look at. I finally got to try shaved ice. I played it safe and got strawberry, which was really good. But we were out in the sun for a couple of hours and I burned (but not too bad!)

There were a lot of different cultures present at the market--Hawaiian, Chinese, Korean. My friend R-- pointed out that there were little gold cat statues outside of the Chinese tents.

Some of the market tents

And, to complete our cultural experience, we stopped at a restaurant (Hannara, I believe) for lunch. They had American, Hawaiian, and Korean food. I ordered Korean. I tried to surreptitiously take a picture of my food with my phone. Here is some kimchi (it was too spicy, I couldn't eat it all), and some pickled vegetable and onion food (also couldn't finish it, I think it is an acquired taste). But the main dish (not pictured here) was very yummy--rice, beef, scrambled egg and onion.

After an uneventful afternoon we went to church right down the street. There are three services at that church, all with different congregations. The evening church was a group of Samoans. The services started at five. Well...sort of. This is Hawaii, after all, so really it was probably more like 5:15. A lot of the service (more like 95% of it) was in the Samoan language. They were all very friendly, greeted us, and made us feel welcome. Today's services was special since it was mother's day. And long. I've never been to a three hour church service before. I guess there is a first for everything! We also got candy lei.

Afterwards, they invited us to join them for a little after-service meal. The adults got whole crabs, shrimp, and other seafood infused foods. The children (and us girls in Intercultural Comm.) got sloppy joes, chips, and pink sausage/hotdog things (I'm really at a loss for how else to describe them). And then ice cream and cake. I was stuffed by the end of dinner. And on a sugar high from the mountain dew and ice cream I ingested. It was a cultural experience, that's for sure! Unlike anything I have ever experienced here in the good ol' US before!