Page 115 - 2003 - Atlantic Islands

So we have been hoping for the best and continue with our activities. We did our

stretching outside again this morning and though it was chilly it felt good to be

outside on the deck over a calm and gentle sea.

They were showing another Shackleton film in the Cosmos Lecture Hall but we

decided not to see it again, but instead did some reading in the room and some

photographing out on deck. There are many birds flying around us today and this

morning we even saw penguins porpoising through the waves fairly close to the ship!

Couldn’t tell what kind they were but every one of us out there knew that they were

penguins and not seabirds.

More reading, photography, picture manipulating and ocean-gazing carried us

through to the 4 o’clock Penguin lecture by Patricia. She did an excellent job of

describing the varieties of penguins we would be seeing and discussing details of

their physiology and adaptations to their habitats. She gave facts and figures on their

sizes, diving depth capacities, and breeding and fledging chicks. She had been very

nervous because of her English but we all thought she did a marvelous job and that

her command of English was more than adequate. She can even make jokes and

funny comments in English and though she told us later that she has millions of

thoughts about the penguins in her mind she was frustrated at her inability to

express the ones she wants to use. Anyone who has ever tried to speak a foreign

language would have to be sympathetic to that difficulty. At any rate, she made a nice

presentation and explained things well.

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