Welcome to Hawaii!

No we aren't going to Hawaii, but we did get to experience a little Hawaii cultural this weekend.
Our neighbors are Hawaiian, they don't look very Hawaiian ( they are light skinned and have light hair), but I guess they just aren't Portuguese. Our neighbors are older couple and they have one son who lives with them and then two who live just up the road from us. They are such a wonderful family and have been so very kind to Josh and I. They all grew up in Hawaii and then moved to California and then somehow moved here to Georgia ( long story). We have had dinner over there several times and they have so many stories about Hawaii and their cultural, it's amazing!
One of their sons got married today (he had been married before and his wife had died of breast cancer). His fiancé is very native (Portuguese I guess) and is such a sweet heart. With them both being older they wanted a real low key wedding, and wanted to have it at their families house (which is right across the street from us. Of course it was filled with some Hawaiian tradition. That included the big Pig dinner! They had asked Josh if he wanted to be involved and of course he jumped to it!
So, yesterday he and some of the guys went and chopped down some huge banana trees. They buried a pit. The pig supposedly has to cook for about 12 hours, so they had planned to bury it at about 4am, Sunday morning, so it would be really by 4p.m.
We ate dinner of there last night and then Josh went back over there to get ready to bury the pig at about 2 am.(I went to bed). The process from what I am told was, you have a big hole that has burning wood, you fill the pig with hot river rocks and then wrap the pig in some wire stuff, banana leaves are put on top of the pig, then the pig is wrapped several times with some material (something special not sure) and then put in the ground, then more wet banana leaves are put on the pig, it is then covered with more material so no dirt can get on the pig, then the dirt covers it all. You have to watch the whole pretty much all night to make sure no steam comes of the whole. It's pretty neat! Josh stayed up with several of the guys until about 6am and then came home. Once again, I was still sleeping. We got up this morning and decided to go over and help decorate and be of any other assistant.
We got to meet a lot of new people (from Hawaii) and another couple that lives close to us that we haven't had the chance to meet yet. Over all it was a really nice night. Here I am back early writing, Josh is still over there enjoying some male time and some beers..haha! I was so tired, so I came home and took a nap.
I'm thankful for some really awesome neighbors. They are such a sweet family and their whole family really looks out for us "newbie's." They say the Hawaiian cultural really embraces family, they treat everyone like family even if you just met. They definitely have treated us like we have known them forever!