9 November, 1996

Nov. 8-9, 1996

Yesterday I ended up staying back in the lab, while some of the others in my group went out coring. Our spryte only holds 4 people and we have 6 in our group so we have to take turns going out. So I took advantage of the time in the lab and did some microscope observations on the cores we had taken already just to get an idea of what types of diatoms were there.

We also got to move to a different dorm today, our old room was so cold I had to sleep in my hat and mittens and big socks just to keep from freezing!

Today I looked at slides again under the microscope in the morning and then went out coring in the afternoon. We went out to a site by the turn off to the ice caves--on the way out there we saw our first PENGUINS! It was great! There were just 3 Adelie penguins wobbling toward us so we got out to watch and they came within 20 ft. and stayed for awhile and then just took off! IT was really neat--they are so cute. I could see them really well through my video camera because I have a pretty powerful zoom on it. Then where we decided to take our cores, we saw 2 Weddell seals sunbathing! We were able to get pretty close to them too and actually saw the hole they came out of and saw one more seal inside the hole! Pretty cool.

Later tonight a bunch of us are getting together to play floor hockey, that should be a pretty fun time.

More news later.

Jessica