My first assessment of living on the island has been that they take great pride in their children and caring for them. Some families go to great lengths in doing so; driving their children for more than an hour so that they can attend private schools is just the tip of the iceberg. But I haven't seen a more clearer example of this care then this past weekend as we celebrated Halloween. I literally felt like we were transported back in the 80's and early 90's; there were so many kids and houses participating that you could hardly find parking in the neighborhoods.
As we were on our way to join our church family in Mililani, we noticed there was an amount of traffic going towards the Mauka (mountain side of Mililani); I commented to Mike that there must be a carnival or something we didn't know about because the traffic was so heavy. Little did we know the real reason why - I'll explain later.
So we first joined our dear friends Amel and Vangie and their kids on their side of the town; we decided to start early since we had very little keikis (kids) with us and we were only going to do a few houses before we headed over to Jay and Angeli's house on the Mauka side. Here is what we observed:
1. People distribute their candies outside of their front door. Some as simple as a chair and table and others set up under their carports or garages; couple of houses had potlucks, full-on parties in their carports and garages.
2. Amount of candies allocated for each child; okay we're not talking about a couple of pieces per keiki, I'm talking about little gift bags full of candy PER CHILD. To clarify, this was not every house, but a majority of them did it this way.
3. Parents dressed up - really dressed up; we ran into an Egyptian family - I think it was Pharaoh and Cleopatra and their little lion. Another family was dressed up as Dog - the Bounty Hunter and his family. We ran into an older couple dressed up in super hero costumes going from house to house, but what was strange was they didn't have any kids with them. Mike just told me that he overheard them say to one of the houses, "Oh we don't want any candies, we just want to say hello." Okay, that's not so strange since people here are amazingly nice!
4. People started trick or treating around 5:30 pm and were still trick or treating even passed 9:00 pm.
Okay back to why there was traffic going towards Mililani Mauka; the island has the perception that people who live in Mauka are rich and although you wouldn't find mansions and super expensive cars there, people in Mauka feed into that perception when they give a huge (understatement) amount of candies out, and one house, I was told, even gave out monies (I may just try to find out which house does this next year!) So the traffic is due to people from Town (Honolulu) and other parts of the island coming to Mauka just to trick or treat. This is about 30 minutes drive - at least! And for islanders, that's FAR to drive! Aside from a possible tsunami warning, this would be the only time we've seen locals drive away from the water and head towards the middle of the island.
On a personal note, our daughter Kk decided she wanted to be Cinderella - her favorite Disney princess. Her accessories included earrings, a necklace, a crown and glass slippers that lit up. And even though she was sick and was running a fever, that didn't stop her from pleading to us to take her trick-or-treating.
So needless to say, we are looking forward to the upcoming holidays here on the island. And as the holidays and Christmas approaches, you'll be sure to find many postings from us.
