Thanks Mom!

Not me.
Definitely not me!
Me!

Thanks Mom, for a delicious buffet dinner at this unique restaurant, complete with fish feeding and a mermaid! I don't think either of us did justice to the "all you can eat" crab legs, shrimp, sushi, prime rib etc. etc. but it was all tasty. Good thing we didn't find out until the next day, while watching the Martin Luther King Day parade, that the workers at this hotel have been fighting for ten years to become unionized! The marchers weren't advocating boycotting, though, just asking us to call the general manager and express our support for the union. I will say that the workers we saw were working hard, and deserve a decent wage.

After dinner, we took a walk along Kalahaua, and in no particular order, here are some of the people/activities/events we saw:
* a GREAT magician! This guy was young, keen, active, and definitely could pull at least water out of thin air! He had a large crowd around him.
* singers - mostly Hawaiian music - what a surprise!
* ukelele players and singers
* one or two guys painted completely silver or gold, posing as statues (and moving very occasionally)
* artists painting Hawaiian scenes
* portrait artists
* caricature artists
* two separate individuals just standing there reading from the bible (no crowds around them)
* a group singing hymns
* a guy handing out pamphlets advertising a gun range (he's there every night!)
* many interesting looking tourists
* and sadly, many homeless (or at least houseless) people, including families. On our way back down Ohua to get to our hotel we passed at least 8 people settled in for the night on the little sidewalk space by the church. Everything else we saw had an element of humour to it. This did not.

So, once again I am reminded how extremely lucky we are to be here, to be able to do what we want to do when we want to do it, to have the means to eat well and sleep in a bed, and to have the good health to climb a mountain, walk along the canal, swim in the ocean. Aloha for now.