"A New Experience" by Teacher (U.S.A.)

Last summer, I took a trip to Daytona Beach with CMMS. A student from Slovakia and I decided to take a walk along the beach. We walked out to the end of the Daytona Beach Pier, where local people were fishing. Their fishing poles rested against the pier’s railings, and the fishing lines plunged down into the murky ocean below. The pier’s deck was scattered with buckets of the day’s fish. All of a sudden, a fisherman caught something on the end of his line. He tugged at his pole and reeled in the fish. It was a shark, a small baby shark! It was about a foot long. The fisherman unhooked the shark and handed it to the student. The student held the baby shark with both hands while the shark squirmed. I told him to throw it back into the ocean so that it wouldn’t die. He threw it back. The baby shark splashed into the water and then swam away. The student told me that he would never forget this day.