helicopter

Tomorrow I am scheduled to take a helicopter ride across the ice shelf to another island.  I am going to Black Island.  It houses our off-continent link to the rest of the world.  I won’t be doing anything really exciting there, it is work related, but I have never been in a helicopter before, so I’m pretty excited about that.  I’ve heard that I will get some good views from the ride.  I’ve also heard that Black Island is notorious for vicious winds kicking up unexpectedly.  So much so that my boss recommend I take a tooth brush and a book in case my flight back is postponed a day or a few.

It was brought to my attention that I mentioned going to a Soiree this past weekend but never said anything else about it.  So here we go.  It was an annual “Woman’s Soiree” which doesn’t mean that only women could go, but that only women were in it.  Given that fact, most of the crowd was male.  It was really neat and I enjoyed it.  It was an opportunity for the girls to display their talents, whatever they may be.  There were quite a few “bands” and singers.  I put bands in quotes because most of the groups were made up just for this event and so some were only a few days old.  My favorite was a band of 2 girls playing ukulele’s and singing.  They were kind of funny.  Their name was “The Uku-ladies”, pretty clever.  But some other acts included a girl reading poetry, a lady reciting some boring stuff, a belly dancer, a hula-hooper, and multiple dance groups.  It was pretty fun overall, but my supervisor said she didn’t go because it’s the same every year.  For me it was all new and I liked it.

I know that it is hard to believe that there were penguins in yesterday’s picture (there were!) so I went to find some more wildlife today.  I’ve been told that with the water getting closer (or the ice going away…I’m not sure which is more accurate) that we will begin to see more wildlife.  Birds and seals and such that depend on and live in the water since that is the only place anything they can eat lives.  A lady at work told me she saw some seals from Hut Point the other day so I though I’d see if they were still there.  Of course they were still there.  Those are the laziest animals I’ve ever seen (and that’s lazy coming from ME).  They just lay right on top of the ice for days and days.  So they were obviously still there and they were close enough that I could actually see them move some, which was a first.  There was even one in the water that I saw surface a few times, look around, catch his breath and then go back under for what seemed an eternity.  I know he was down there a long time, but what made it seem longer was the wind whipping me in the face, it was freezing.  So waiting to see him again was painful (literal and figurative).  Here they are from a distance:

Just like anything else I’ve tried to take pictures of, I could see them a lot better than the picture would lead you to believe.  Unfortunately I don’t know what type of seal they are, but the popular ones around here are Weddell and Leopard, so I’d bet they were either of those although your guess is as good as mine.