GROWING A PINEAPPLE TREE
Pineapples don’t grow on trees! or do they? (google it up!) Like a pineapple tree, misconceptions abound about places and things we don’t know firsthand. This blog confronts misconceptions about paradise and explores the reality of living life outside the norm. Ellie’s a midwesterner who fell in love with the ocean, Ta’u’s an island boy who finds joy in the winter. Now husband and wife, we bounce between our many homes including Minnesota, Easter Island, and Hawaii. We often feel like we are living many simultaneous lives. This is our attempt to reconcile them all in one tidy little story. Follow us as we document our (mis)adventures and bounce between extreme differences in climate, culture, food, and life in general. We will also use this place to gather random bits that don’t always go together – bits that inspire us, make us laugh, or tips and tricks we’ve learned through our travels.
OUR ROOTS
Ta’u was born to an American mother and a native Easter Islander (Rapanui) on Easter Island (think giant stone statues), and lived in Hawaii during his teen years. Ellie, a Minnesotan, knew at the age of 8 that she was going to be an archaeologist. In college she found a field school on Easter Island and jumped at the chance to go to such a remote and well-known archaeological “mystery” (which she soon learned wasn’t so much of a mystery but was a magical place with a magnetism that made it hard to leave). She met Ta’u there, who, while attending college for film and television in LA, was spending his summer break on the island. They fell in love and soon were plotting their joint future. Since then, we’ve lived in Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, and now Minnesota again, with many winters spent on Easter Island working in tourism.
Ta’u is a film and television producer whose passion is to produce quality educational material about Polynesia and the Pacific. Ellie has moved away from archaeology now, but has a master’s in genetic anthropology and is working in tourism and on many education-related projects on Easter Island. In addition to working on this blog and a number of other exciting projects related to our love of the Pacific, we are writing and producing our first feature-length documentary about the challenges facing Easter Island as it rapidly develops. See Eating Up Easter for more info.