This was definitely a lifetime event for us! Two weeks ago, we did not even know how to hold a ukulele, let alone play one! And, now we are in the Guinness Book of World Records!

On April 1st, we found out that Tahiti had entered the contest to beat the Guinness World Book of Records for 2,370 people playing the ukulele at the same time in the same place (UK 2014). The date of the contest was April 11th and anyone could be in it. So, Gail (still goal oriented) decided this was a life-time accomplishment and wanted to play. Of course, we did not have a ukulele, nor did we know how to play one, not to mention that Gail can NOT sing! And, they required everyone to wear Tahitian outfits. Tony thought I was nuts! But, a friend of ours got a borrowed uke for us, we went shopping and got outfits to wear, and then we just had 9 days to learn to play the uke!

With the upcoming contest, the organizers arranged to give free lessons to everyone in Papeete and all the villages all over the island. There were classes at the town hall, a mile from the marina. So, with our one borrowed uke, we showed up. They recognized us as someone foreign and the leader came over to meet us. At the start of the lesson, there was a long prayer, and then they had us stand up and introduced us! Then the "lesson" started. They had the words and the chords to the song Bora Bora on the board and they all started playing. There were up to 150 people there and I think we were the ONLY ones who did not know how to play, in fact, we did not even know how to hold a uke! They all knew the words and knew how to play. We played Bora Bora several times through, then they just started playing all these other songs and they all knew the words and how to play them! What a "lesson"! But, we went back for the other 2 "lessons" and everyone else went back too! I thought all the people who knew how to play wouldn't be there again, but evidently, they just wanted to play with other people. So, we got to know some people and they were all so nice to us. We were definitely a novelty! And we bought a uke so we could both play! (See "Lesson" Video

On Saturday, whole event unfolded so nicely. We got to the stadium at 1:30 and everyone was just hanging out jamming. It drizzled for about an hour, and the clouds looked really bad. Tony and I were worried, but it turns out that having a drizzle before an event is believed to be "good luck" in Tahiti. As they started letting people into the stadium, the rain stopped, but it stayed cloudy, which kept it cool. There were ab out 8,000 people who showed up to play, but the stadium could only hold 4,750 people, so our official number of people playing was 4,750. But, there were thousands of people outside the stadium playing as well and they showed the event live on a large flat screen TV outside the stadium. Several friends were outside watching and they said it was awesome to be there. Inside, it was so cool! We were all dressed in Tahitian outfits, with flowers in our hair and leis around our necks and the wonderful aroma filled the stadium. We played a few songs to warm up. They had a short concert by some young talented musicians. Then we played one practice song of Bora Bora, and at 5:00 we played it for the official record. It was SO AWESOME when we all finished the last chord perfectly! The whole stadium cheered, holding our ukuleles in the air! Then we just broke out into another song, then another, etc.

We did it! We broke the previous UK record of 2,370 people playing ukulele at the same time! The whole island was a buzz! Downtown was crowded with thousands of people carrying their ukes and the energy was everywhere. (See Photos)

Here is the French Press video with us in it! But, we are playing another song, not the contest song, and we did not know the words. Click the link on the side of blog page, or copy this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8lmzLEzHME

Nice Video with scenes of before and the record song at the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXrzstP2D8U

After Party (people just started playing one song after another and you can really feel the energy in the stands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMkQu0B5ohc

We got our certificate? Got our t-shirt! And, now we're famous! Ha Ha!

More Later! G&T