October was a month of “Aloha Festivals” celebrations. Each island celebrates during a specific week. Our hotel celebrated during the first week of October. Our celebration was called “Makahiki”. It consisted of various locals demonstrating the original Hawaiian culture, i.e. coconut shucking, Poi making, spear fighting, ocean net fishing, etc. The Hawaiian Royal Court (King and Queen) made an appearance as well.

As most of you heard, the islands endured a major earthquake on October 15. It was the wildest thing I’ve ever experienced. Thank God it was on a Sunday and fairly early. I thought Ginger was trying to jump upon the bed and kept missing because the bed was shaking. When I finally woke up enough to figure out it wasn’t Ginger, I got up and immediately realized we had no electricity at all. I grabbed my keys and turned my car radio on. Sure enough, it was an earthquake. It was really cloudy and cool that day, Thank you Lord. The electricity finally came back on around 4 p.m. Maui received the least damage of any of the islands. The Big Island (Hawaii) received the worst.

You would think as big as Honolulu is they would be better prepared for such disasters. They were the worst prepared of all islands. The airport was a mess. My boss was on Oahu for the weekend. She was on her way to the airport when the earthquake hit. She was stranded at the airport for over 8 hours. Airlines, airport officials, no one gave updates on the situation. She said it was horrible. So glad I stayed put.

The end of the month was, of course, Halloween. The hotel had a costume contest with cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. The Reservations department has quite a reputation. They are so creative and come up with the funniest costumes. This year we were “Beauty and the Beast”. It was quite funny. Needless to say being the new kid on the block, I was initiated by being the Beast. I’ve attached a picture. Well, as usual we won first place. We only compete because we use the money to fund our department Christmas party.