water

The Freezing Man thing last night was a neat experience.  It was perfect for those free spirited, crazy people.  Not perfect for me, but still fun.  People were dressed up in whatever they felt like.  There were a lot of black-lights and wigs and crazy outfits.  There were even clothes that you could borrow at the door, but I didn’t bother with that.  There were a few performances; a few dance groups, the belly dancer and a play but it was mainly just people hanging out in the basketball gym.  At one point there was an enormous beach ball being bounced around, that was pretty fun.  All-in-all a good time, but I didn’t stick around too long.

When I was on the ice breaker I could see that there was some open water over by Ob Hill.  I hadn’t noticed it anywhere else, but I decided to go check it out this afternoon.  It was overcast today, but not too cold.  I made it around the loop and on the farthest part there was the open water I saw from the ship.  It was pretty neat.  I saw 2 Adelie penguins, a Weddell seal, and a skua all in the same area.  Except for the Emperor penguins, that’s all the wildlife I’ve seen since I’ve been here and I saw them all at the same time.  Here’s a picture of the water and of Mount Discovery in the distance.  Down in the bottom left hand corner is where the penguins are, but they just look like dots.  I thought it was neat that the sun was shining over at Mount Discovery, but was nowhere to be found where I was standing:

Since I don’t have a lot more to report, I thought I’d show you this picture too.  It is a picture of the Oden leaving and I thought it was neat because with the low light and haze it kind of looks like a boat in regular water.  The ice in the foreground could almost pass for waves or rippled water.  It kind of made me think of seeing a big ship out in the Atlantic ocean on a hazy morning.  I hope you can see what I’m talking about because I think (for once) the picture captures what I saw: