August 18

We had so much fun last night.  For the party we met in the cultural hall at our church which as a reminder is part of the LDS Primary School.  Spouses had been invited so there was a possibility of 164 in attendance.  I would guess that there were more than 100.  Each department/group of employees had been asked to prepare some kind of entertainment.  Our dance was to be last.  In between the acts three employees sang western, classic rock, and Fijian numbers.  They were fabulous.  The upper primary school teachers did a line dance to Achey Breaky Heart and were dressed up in western gear.  It was so cute to see these Fijian and Indian woman doing a western line dance.  Grades kindy through 3rd did a Hawaii dance.  The LDS College (high school) did an olympic skit that was so funny I laughed so hard I had tears.  One half of the Facilities Management Staff (men) had recruited some kids to help them do some dance.  I am not sure what it was.  There was another skit entitled "How Johnny really won Mahonah.  Again, I laughed until I cried.  This went on for almost two hours.  These people know how to have a good time.  Half way through they did two ice-breakers that were mega fun.  So at the end we did our dance.  We all walked out onto the stage.  The men stood in the back and the woman sat in a line in the front of the stage.  We had practiced just singing two verses and two choruses and doing the hand movements, but the group that had been entertaining between acts wanted to accompany us and their rhythm wasn't our rhythm and where we had decided to sing two verses, they kept playing through six verses.  What a hoot!  My Fijian cheat sheet only worked for the first two verses, so I sang only the chorus after that.  Then the men did their war club dance while we women clapped to the rhythm.  They cheated, however, as they had a video showing on the back of the front stage wall.
(Did that make sense?)  It worked until the guy in the video began to count the movements about half way through the dance.  The audience went crazy laughing when they could hear, "one...two...three...four...one...two...three...four"  The guys didn't care.

As a side note they gave prizes for the best dancer, singer or actor in each group that performed.  Yours truly, yup me, won the prize for our Fijian dancers.  I was so excited until I got the prize--a baseball cap with Yamaha written on the front.  I really wanted one of the pens that the emcee kept saying was just five clicks away from a car.

The Dancers!
Notice the leaf leis that Diana made fore everyone.

I'm not even watching Salote to see if I am doing it right.

Thank heaven we didn't have any foot work!

Our men standing around while we do our part

Clapping to the beginning of the men's dance.
Even the Fijian needed cheat sheets!

They fed us a light meal after, but Naomi Waka was here from New Zealand and we had asked if we could take her to dinner after as a thank you for how nice she had been to us when we were in New Zealand.  We ate at Cafe Thirty although we did eat dessert at the party before we left.  A perfect meal always starts with dessert!

Naomi Waka and Us