Hawaii Fishing & Seafood Festival

Aloha everyone,

Today is Columbus Day- and while I don't believe Columbus deserves his own holiday named after him, I am thankful for the day off! Yesterday was the Hawaii Fishing & Seafood Festival... so instead of being able to sleep in (on a Sunday no less) I had to be ready to leave at 7:30 a.m! So I'm happy I had this morning to make up for it. Anyway, the festival was actually a lot of fun. NOAA Fisheries had a few booths set up along the back of the pier/docks right on the water. It was soo windy though! Each of us volunteers was assigned an activity. I got the microscope station, which was probably one of the busiest activities at our booth because of all the kids! I never thought I was particularly good with kids- I always feel sort of awkward around them. But yesterday, I think I did a pretty good job interacting with the public. I tried my best to engage people in conversation to try and educate them about what NOAA Fisheries is all about and what we do in the Pacific region. I was aboslutely shocked at how many people had no clue what NOAA was. Some guy even asked me "Who funds you guys?" and I was like "Well, we're a federal government agency... so we're funded by the government." Just goes to show the lack of information and awareness that's out there. But anyway, one of the coordinators for education and outreach for the entire Pacific region came over to me and said "So you know I'm going to be bugging you from now on everytime we need volunteers, because you're really good!!" I guess my countless experiences speaking and/or performing in public has paid off. Here are some pictures from the festival...

Since Daland had yesterday off from work, he came to the festival after my shift was over and we took a look around at the different booths. Most of the booths were for local Hawaiian fishers. We checked out NOAA's Law Enforcement Booth and Daland of course asked a few questions. For the most part, people were selling products like fishing lures, anti-rusting agents for boats and equipment, fishing poles, etc. etc. So considering we're not big into fishing ourselves, we decided to leave a bit early and go get some lunch out. We ended up at Teddy's Bigger Burgers (which we've been to a couple of times before) and both got big juicy burgers. I swear, they have the best burgers I've EVER had. I don't know what they do to their beef, but it's absolutely delicious.

So for the rest of the day we just stayed at home and relaxed. Daland is working today and I'm just watching some TV for now. Think I'll do a little bit of cleaning and be somewhat productive today. Other than that, I'm going to enjoy the day off!

Lots of love,
Chelsey