Lucas' Class Lu`au

For the last 12 weeks, Lucas has been taking a beginner's course in the Hawaiian language which culminated in a class lu`au at the UC Irvine campus. We all got together to share in what we had learned as a class and celebrate over some great Hawaiian food and share in the culture together. 

Each student got a chance to share either a genealogy chant of their family, a hula dance or a song to the class. It was really fun to get to spend some face to face time with each of his classmates who he had otherwise known as screen names on his online class sessions. Randomly enough, and this just proves how small the world is, one of the other students, Haunani, taking a higher level Hawaiian class happened to know my mom when they were both in High School at Kamehameha. It was really fun to get to hear about their high school days.

On our way out, we got one last surprise from UC Irvine - a parking ticket. We were parked in the visitor parking lot, but apparently only some of the actual parking spots were for visitors. Naturally we weren't parked in one of these visitor parking spots, despite being in the visitor parking lot. Yes, California is that desperate for money that they'll do anything to issue tickets. This brings the count of parking tickets received to 3 by Lucas and 1 by Mahina in my car... Argh. 

Glee Premiere at The Grove!!!

Gleeks!

The addiction and phenomenon that has become Glee was not at all evident the night of the special premiere of the first episode of the second half of Season 1 at the Grove in Los Angeles... Ya right. When we got there at 5pm for the 7pm showing the line was already around the block and continuing to grow. KISS FM was playing host to the people in line as well as the premiere itself so luckily we had some entertainment while we all waited in line. The Glee Cheerleaders were working the line handing out hats, posters and water to everyone waiting.

After a short two-hour wait the line finally began to show signs of life and slowly started moving. We don't think that everyone made it into the special viewing area, but the fenced off area in front of the projection screen was standing room only as everyone got excited to see the premiere. Continuing to build the hype, KISS FM held a couple of Glee sing-off contests and dance contests giving away prizes and tickets to the Glee Concert before showing the episode. What we were really waiting for though was for the sun to set so that the projector screen wouldn't be washed out. Much to everyone's glee (no pun intended), most of the cast made an appearance at the premiere and said hello to the crowd and introduced the episode when it was time to get the show rolling. 

With the episode underway, the crowd went silent and stood transfixed on the screen as the episode was shown. At the end, they also previewed the next episode, Madonna, as everyone was walking out. When the night came to a close it had been fun and exciting to see the episode surrounded by a ton of fans and making out with special Glee water and a cast poster was great too!