Louise Julig

Pacific Islander Festival

I had a chance to experience the Pacific Islander Festival for myself this weekend after researching it for the Cultural Connections column I wrote earlier this summer. My husband, daughter and I sampled some of the delicious banana donuts and lumpia from the SweetStacks booth before browsing the surprisingly large vendor area, coming away with, among other things, a packet of mango slices in li hing mui juice from Ohana Crack Seeds (if you’ve never experienced li hing mui, you should — it’s tangy but mostly indescribable) and a board game, “Ohana Mana” designed by locally owned family-run business Akamai Games. Music and dance performances run continuously on the main stage during festival hours, so we had a chance to watch some of the performances while we spread out on the lawn with our lunch — bbq beef plates from the Hui O Hawaii booth, followed by genuine Hawaiian shave ice. Yum. But my favorite part had to be the Cultural Village, where we chatted with folks representing the different island groups. Mo Malabanan of Aloha Ranch (in photo above) enlightened us about the Hawaiian cowboy tradition, we saw a collection of Micronesian love sticks (for putting in girls’ hair) and at the Samoan booth we saw an artist making traditional siapo and learned the best way to crack and shred a coconut. The Pacific Islander Festival Association puts this festival on every year to help perpetuate traditional cultures and values and bring education and entertainment to the entire community. The fact that this is a free event attended by 100,000 people over two days is remarkable. I would highly recommend attending this family-friendly festival.

Turtle Wisdom

Find out What the Turtle Taught Me in a just-for-fun essay recently added to my other site, Thoughts Happen. Link to it here or in the Thoughts Happen feed in the sidebar. As always, I love to hear your comments! -LJ

Cultural Connections: Hawaii and the Pacific Islands

I really enjoyed researching the Hawaii and the Pacific Islands piece I did for the Cultural Connections column that appears in the September issue of San Diego Family Magazine. I learned about the origins of the Pacific Islander Festival (coming up soon!) and the Hui o Hawaii, which will be hosting their 39th Annual Luau next month. The generosity of the Pacific Islander culture is the real deal, as I experienced while interviewing for this piece. Check the SDFM web site for distribution sites where you can pick up a copy of the magazine, including Henry's, Borders and many other San Diego locations, and find out where to get the most authentic Hawaiian and Pacific Islander food in San Diego county, fresh flowers leis, lau hala purses and kukui nut handicrafts. UPDATE: 9/28/08 Read today's post about our day at the Pacific Islander Festival 2008.

Download CulturalConnectionsSm.pdf (496K) 

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