Fishing, Arno Style

What a relaxing weekend! I spent the entire weekend in Arno with Melissa and Francis and it was quite enjoyable. We worked as normal Saturday morning and then decided to stay an extra day because Lin, the garden guru from Majuro, was planning to come early Sunday morning. Melissa and I just relaxed all night and did a bit of lesson planning and reminiscing down on the lagoon at night. It was really fun talking about all kinds of crazy memories from our childhood, and I think it actually made me sympathize with my kids a little bit remembering what it was like to be their age – in America nonetheless.
Anyways, Sunday morning came and we waited around until about lunchtime for Lin to come. This guy is a little bit hilarious and has a huge crush on Melissa. He doesn’t know English super well, so the bluntness of his comments are hilarious. We talked about farming a little bit, but mostly we just ate and then ended up going out on the boat he had chartered for the day! Not a bad deal. He chartered the 4X and so that meant he had it for the entire day. He offered to take Melissa to the Ine dock so she didn’t have to bike home, so I went along for the ride and it was awesome. We went straight there and the on the way back stopped in various places and fished. These guys (the men on the boat who are actually both Francis’ brothers) were big time fishermen and are the best in the Marshall Islands. Ben Reimers, the captain, actually just won the All Micronesia fishing tournament and got $10,000 for breaking some record and catching a 694 Lb. Marlin! That is huge. We didn’t catch anything like that – but we definitely caught a bunch of big groupers. As the guys were reeling in one of the groupers, a shark came along and right before we pulled it out of the water chomped down on the fish and fought for half of it. He got it! That was scary…but also kind of cool to watch.
We ended up fishing and hanging out on the water for about 3 hours before we went back to Arno,Arno. When we did finally get back, I biked back to Lukoj and spent the rest of the evening lesson planning, and bewbewnato-ing with the family. I felt bad being gone all weekend – but it was a rough week and I needed a little decompression.