Spam is something which lots of people in Hawaii love to eat. In total the people here eat about 7 million cans of Spam per year, which would be more than 4.5 cans per resident, the biggest number of the whole US, and possibly even the rest of the world. It is even so that Hawaii knows an annual festival called ‘Spam Jam‘, with Spam as the main piece of interest.

So, Michelle, Isabella and I went yesterday to the Spam Jam 2010 in Waikiki, to see what it is all about. The event took place from 4 pm to 10 pm, we arrived there around 6 pm. I can tell you it was quite busy, there was an estimate of 20,000 people last year and I think they have reached the same amount of visitors again, it was pretty busy.

The event was held in Waikiki, on Kalakaua Avenue, which is like the main street of Waikiki. The road was partly closed for all traffic as there were all kinds of booths on the road where people could eat all kinds of dishes with Spam as the main ingredient, and there were also a few stages where they had some bands perform.

So what kind of dishes with Spam did they have? Think about stuff such as Spam Hotdogs, Volcano Nachos with Spam Chili, Spam and Kalua Pork Enchiladas, Spicy Spam Wraps, Spam noodles, Fried Rice Spam and this list continues on and on. There was really a lot for sale.

It was fun to be at the Spam Jam, but there sure was a lot of people.. I think they would be better off if they held it in a park instead as it is just too crowded for a public road (plus, traffic around that area was terrible, it is supposed to be one of the busier streets on Oahu).

Here’s a new message from us, it has been a while so I figured we could write something again

I think I will start with Michelle and the baby as everything goes very well with them, we finally figured out a name for the baby, also thanks to my daughter Larissa, who was asked to make the final decision between a couple of names. Michelle can feel the baby kick quite a lot of times lately, but of course you’ll see that I am out of luck when I want to feel it, as the baby instantly stops when I put my hand on her belly.. Oh well, I’d like to think she doesn’t wants to hurt her daddy

We went out during last friday and saturday, mostly because of my birthday. Yep, I start to become an old ba***rd haha. Nah, it’s not that bad haha. Next to all the presents that I received from the Netherlands, I received a new digital slr camera from Michelle, including 2 zoomlenses, filters and some more stuff. It’s really a nice camera, which had to be tested, of course

Well, I can tell you that I have to learn a lot as it is no longer point-and-shoot, no, I can adjust all settings myself now, such as the whitebalance, lighting, arpeture, etc. etc. Of course you can adjust some settings on a normal digital camera, but not many people do this, but it is much more fun to do it with this camera haha.

Anyways, we went to the southcoast last friday, where some people were surfing. We went here mostly so I could see if I could zoom in some more with this camera (surfing usually happens on quite some distance from the coast). And I have to say it works pretty nice, here some pictures:

The first picture has been made smaller, mostly because it was shot in a big size. The second picture is the same as the first, but cropped and on, almost, normal size .

Above pictures are just to show how far you can zoom with this thing, the surfer in the picture was quite far from the coast. Below some more pictures, shot on the same spot:

Some photos are sadly a bit darker than I wanted them to be (also because of the clouds during the day), but oh well, we only just have this camera, we still have a lot to learn

Before we went to Waikiki for a dinner, we went to town when it started to become evening. I shot some more pictures there, mostly because I wanted to make a panorama picture and wanted to shoot some photos during the sunset. Here are a few of those pictures:

I know these are almost the same photos, but I wanted to show that the sky of Hawaï knows many colors, especially during sunset. There is only a few minutes during the above photos.Here are a few more photos:

And then we were sent away by the security.. we were there quite some time and they thought it was pretty suspicious that there were some people, shooting photos, from the roof of the parking garage. It was too bad, but oh we, we decided to go towards Waikiki for our dinner.

As for the panorama photo, here’s one (I made it smaller in size, the original was about 20 megabyte big):

It’s quite easy to make such a panorama photo, you just have to make sure that the camera is on a tripod, that you make enough photos to overlap everything (I believe there’s 34 photo’s in the above panorama), and that you use the right software. I use a free program, and I have to say it works like a charm. The program does everything for me, place the photo’s, align them, adjust the shades etc etc.

Right, we went to Waikiki after all this and we decided to drive through town afterwards, so we could find a certain building (I will place the photo of this building below). Just when we found this building, the police pulled me over (or I should say, I drove into a parkinglot and he then came on from behind). It turned out that I didn’t stop for a stopsign. He checked our papers and checked if I didn’t drank any alcohol (probably because we said that we had a dinner just before, and I have to say that it is not like the Netherlands where they use a breath analyzer, no, I had to follow a pen with my eyes while he aimed a flashlight on my eyes… I don’t know but I doubt this is a correct way to do it.. oh well, I didn’t drink anything so I didn’t had to worry). After a short lecture, he let me go without a ticket. I was pretty lucky with that. I have no idea why, but I think it might have been because of my birthday, that he had seen the birthdate on the driver license. According to Michelle it might also have been that it was because I didn’t cause any problems and just stayed nice, or because I was honest about my mistake… whatever it was, I like to stick with my birthday as for explanation

But oh well, the building we were looking for is the following:

Looks good, doesn’t it? (Yes, I know, I used a lens which made stars of the lights, I shouldn’t have done this but oh well haha.. it’s all in a learning process).

Can you believe this is just a mural, and not something like 3D?

This piece of art has been painted in 18 months (10 to 14 hours a day) by an artist named ‘John Pugh’. They wrote the following about it in the local paper:

“Pugh said the epic wave behind surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku is Queen Lili’uokalani herself, whose enduring legacy lives on through the children’s center named for her and in other ways. To get the wave just right, he hired a glass artist to make a model of a wave he could study throughout.

He said the children shown in the mural offer gifts that pay tribute to the queen. In a window to the right side is Prince Kuhio, who served in Congress and created the Hawaiian homes act to return more Hawaiians to the land.”

So, yeah, to prove that it is just a mural, here’s a photo from up close:

That this painting can really fool people shows from a part in the same article in the local paper, where they wrote about a crew of firemen who thought that the children in the mural were stuck and couldn’t come down any more. When they wanted to save them, they found out about their mistake haha.

Ok, tomorrow, or the day after, I will post a new message about last Saturday. We also went out on that day, and I made some photo’s in a botanical garden. But ok, that kind of depends on how busy I am (I am quite busy lately for some reason). And now to bed, it’s getting late..

A bit later than expected but here is, still as promised, a bit more complete report of our wedding day.. better late than never

Our day started out a bit early, something we did not counted on as we would marry only at 3 pm. It was probably our nerves but oh well, we still had a few things to do so it wasn’t all that bad.

Michelle’s sister, Jey, came around lunch hour together with her daughter and her mother, to us to do Michelle’s make-up and to follow us towards the location where the wedding ceremony would be held.

Michelle and I left a little after 2 pm towards Nu’uanu in Michelle’s mother’s Benz together with her mom, aunt and grandmother in the back (the car is big enough and they are not so big so that was pretty easy). Michelle’s aunt was a bit surprised as she did not know that I can actually use my Dutch drivers license here on Hawaii and said something like “Oh, you can drive already?“, I had to laugh a bit about it since it sounded a bit funny and told her that I had my license for about 12-13 years now and that it is valid over here also.

When we arrived at the botanical garden, we arrived a bit too early as we counted on some traffic before we left but there was none haha, it turned out that it wasn’t so bad as the Reverend was there also already. He was still gathering some things from his car and in the mean time we walked towards to him. We introduced ourselves and he asked me how to pronounce my name (always fun haha) and after a few tries, he had the catch. I joked a bit about my name and the people back in the Netherlands not making it too easy on him and he replied with “hoe heet je?” (what is your name), and added “thats about all I know in Dutch haha“. I was a bit surprised that he knew a bit of Dutch and asked him how it came he knew Dutch and he told us that he stayed for a couple of years in the Netherlands around his 13th, 14th years of age since his dad used to be in the army. He told us that he lived in The Hague (He said ‘Den Haag’, the Dutch form) before and he actually pronounced the name (in Dutch) pretty well, also the names Schiphol and Scheveningen came out without any problem, which I think is pretty amazing as a lot of non-Dutch people have lots of problems with the ’sch’ part. I thought it was really good. After a bit of chit chatting, we went downwards, towards the area where we would get married.

Once we got there (it sounds like a pretty long walk which it wasn’t haha), it turned out that the photographer had already arrived, the Reverend send away a few kids who were behind us on the waterfall (probably because of the risk of them jumping into the water and making us wet), and we went to make a few pictures, such as putting on the Haku Lei (the flowers on the head of Michelle) and so. Since the pictures of the photographer are on a different website and since I rather not have any copyright claimes (you never know), I will give the link only for now: http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/thumbpage.aspx?e=4226692. You can, however, see some more pictures down here which we made of our wedding (well ok, Michelle’s mother made these, we didn’t, of course):

There are a lot more pictures of this part of our marriage but we do not have these yet, these will come a bit later

Ok, so after putting on the lei’s (the flowers and such), the ceremony was good to go. The Reverend greeted everyone in Hawaiian with “Aloha kakou! E komo mai!” and continued in English (which is, of course, a lot easier to follow haha) and said a few things until it was time to ask the important questions “Michelle and Jeroen, are you now ready to be joined as husband and wife?” on which we replied wholeheartedly with yes. Then we each got the individual question if we would want to become husband and wife with: “Jeroen/Michelle, do you take Michelle/Jeroen to be your wedded wife/husband to be her/his husband/wife, partner & best friend - to love, honor & cherish her/him in all your days together?” on which we both answered with “I do!” (this did not go as his/her, of course, but it went with that what was suitable for each person).

After this it was time for the rings, which went as: “These circles of precious metal are symbols of wholeness and perfection. Without beginning or end, they are symbols of eternity. They are material tokens that represent  your spiritual union. You will wear them from this day forward as outer symbols of your inner devotion to each other“. And after this we could exchange the rings for real, supported with the following vows: “With love in my heart for all the world to see I have chosen you Michelle/Jeroen, as my wife/husband. I pledge to share my life openly with you, to speak the truth to you, to respect, to honor, to tenderly care for you. It is my heart’s desire to live with you through all the changes of our lives. I love you and want you as my wife/husband always“.

After this it was time for the words: “You have come together for this holy celebration, to exchange your vows and these rings before God and these witnesses. Because you have planned your marriage and your home in the purest faith, you come to this moment with all honor and integrity. Therefore, by the authority of our loving Creator - and the state of Hawaii - I now pronounce you, partners in life, husband and wife. You may kiss your true love“, which pronounced us husband and wife

After this the closing of the ceremony was there and the Reverend introduced us as newly weds:

“It is now my honor, privilege and pleasure to introduce to you and to our world: Mr. and Mrs. Jeroen Joosten. E ho’okahi ke aloha - May you always be united in love“.

And with that the ceremony was at the end, we took some more pictures and the photographer asked me a few times if I was really sure not to throw the bride into the water as, he said, it would give some real nice photo moments hahaha, yeah I believe it would be haha but no, I had to turn him down haha.

As we had to wait for a bit until we all could eat at the hotel, we decided to go towards Waikiki and take some more pictures (the hotel is nearby that spot so why not). Here are a few of these pictures:

I wont describe too much about these pictures but when you hover the cursor over the pictures, or click on them to magnify them, you will see a describtion

After this all we went towards the hotel to have a nice dinner with all of us. The food was, at least in my opinion, really great, I liked it a lot. It was a buffet in the hotel so we could take a bit of everything, which we did. There were Hawaiian dishes but also Asian or more European aimed dishes, a bit for every taste.

We also took a few pictures before dinner at the hotel:

The last picture is a picture of our marriage certificate (I should scan it but I just took a picture as the scanner is not installed on my laptop yet hehe). This is a memory, by the way, not the official marriage certificate which we will get from the state of Hawaii later on. We also received a booklet with the text of the vows and the text that the Reverend spoke during the ceremony.

After this all it was time to go home again, I think it was a really great day with lots of very nice memories

I will not write a long post since it is around eleven in the evening, I think you can understand this… I wanted to write something, though, because I know there are quite a few people who want to hear something about this =)

So today it was our wedding day, it was a great day, we had nice weather (you might say ‘how could it be different’ but the last week it hasn’t been always nice as the rainseason is approaching), it was just very beautiful.

I do not want to say too much about the whole wedding right now, I will write the long story tomorrow.. I will also post a few more pictures tomorrow, but, since I know there are some people who want to see some pictures, here are a few of them:

You can see us together on the first picture with Reverend Kermit Rydell, the second picture does not need any explanation I think and on the third picture you can see us together with Michelle’s aunt, grandmother and mother (that is from left to right on my side) and her friends aka 2nd family (from left to right on Michelle’s side): Jey, Juliet, Jennifer, Cire en Jon.

I wanted to keep it short at first but since I am working on it anyways, I could as well give some more pictures:

After the wedding ceremony we went to Waikiki where we took some more pictures at the Hilton Lagoon. The first picture is in front of this lagoon and in the background you can also see Diamond Head crater. The second picture, with the rainbow on the building, is in front of the Hawaiian Hilton hotel and the third one has been taken on the beach near Waikiki in front of the ocean (if you would sail that way, you would not find anything until you are at Antartica haha). The last picture is a photo I made from the hotel, where we had a nice dinner together with everyone, and made against the sun. I thought it was a nice picture which is why I added it.

Ok, for now I will say good night (or, for those in Europe: I wish you a great day haha). I will describe the rest of the story tomorrow