One fish, two fish, my fish, free fish

Today Andrew, Avery & Drake were invited by, our good friend, Wong to go fishing. Bright and early this morning Wong rang our buzzer and off they all went. He was so thoughtful when planning this outing, days before he bought and prepared the rods for the kids.

The day started off slow, with a long train ride to the end of the metro line, near Nanjing University. Andrew was pretty surprised to walk out of the subway only to cross the street and begin fishing in a pond or as he described it, a really big ditch. This body of water was pretty much in the middle of the city and we still aren’t sure where the shui was feeding from but it was apparent that any catch of the day was not for eating… at least by us.

To sum up the day, Andrew and Wong caught sardine sized fish while Drake had all four of the biggest catches of the day and half an hour into fishing Avery decided she would just be the bait girl, and hooked the worms for the guys.

 

Back at the apartment, the Ayi had just arrived for work when the kids came home with a bucket of five or six fish. Wong told Drake he had to bring the fish home to show me how well he did. I was very proud! Now, what do we do with these fish, in a bucket sitting in the kitchen floor? Give them to Ayi! (my idea) so, I showed her and she got really excited and wasted no time grabbing the cleaver and cutting of heads.. about three fish into prep the kids walked into the kitchen. After a moment of awe at her process, it began to sink in that she was killing the fish and going to eat them. First, they began to stand in front of the bucket and yell “NO, you can’t have anymore!” after, I asked “what are we going to do with these fish!? She is excited and she is going to eat them, that’s great – you provided her with dinner, you should be proud.” The tears began to flow. After a short debate with Andrew, we told the kids that if they could get the fish to our community pond without anyone seeing them, they could release the fish there. They perked up and the mission began.

They made it to the pond and the release went well. Drake attributed sneaking the fish passé dpeople to Avery’s cuteness in distracting them. The Ayi didn’t quite know what was going on or why they took the fish from her but it didn’t matter – she got 4 out of 5 and all was happy in the end!