PushingJelly

Has it really been five days already?
Today we covered more about AD/OD, Kerb and foreign directories and of course today is exam day. A little apprehensive of course, but I will do my best and that is all I can do.
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Well I passed: 89.23% (58 earned out of 65 possible) Not up to Ian’s standard but not the lowest in the group and more than good enough to get my four points.
I actually miss read the score when I finished the exam and told everyone (including Ian and Julie) that I got 86%. I wont bother saying anything here as I look foolish enough with the various things I have done this week.

I was left feeling rather un-educated today. I left school with a hand full of CSEs and not particularly good ones either, This evening I sat in the middle of a conversation where everyone had degrees of some sort, had travelled the world and seemed far more interesting that me. I kept quiet for a while but then made seme comment about the CSE’s. One of the other trainees kindy (I think?) described me as an uber geek, I chose to take it as a complement.
One of my all time favourite quotes is “it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt”. Abraham Lincoln said it originally, however I was introduced to it by Lisa Simpson (highbrow hey?).

This evening as way of a treat for our exam results, we travelled down the hill to the MarineWorld aquarium where we had dinner and then watched dolphin and orca shows. The animals were lovely but of course their pens were far too small and I felt very sorry for them.
I watched the Dolphins and then as everyone filed over to the Orcas to watch their show, I took a detour via the shark tunnel and Turtles then walked to the top of the auditorium and watched the four orcas do their tricks. I have to admit I was willing them to “play” with their human trainers in the same way as they “play” with seals in the wild. Alas their were good orcas and just got on with pleasing the audience. I left the orca show early to avoid the crush and walked back to the other areas to look at the seals or penguins. As I was passing the Dolphin show I saw that all the lights were on and there were no barriers. I walked in and the place was absolutely empty of people. There, in the lake, were four dolphins. I stood by one of the barriers expecting a voice shout Monsieur! any second but none came.
The dolphins were talking to two of their kind in an adjacent small pool and were ignoring me.
I walked around to the other side of the lake where the dolphins were and just stood still, watching.
These beautiful intelligent creatures looked so sad in the enclosure, one in particular just floated listlessly with its nose touching the side of the lake. The other three swam around and often went to see the others in the small pool.
I stood quietly still and after 10 minutes or so, they seemed to notice me. Naturally inquisitive, they lifted their eyes a foot or so out of the water to give me a good looking over. I smiled and softly spoke to them and tried to think nice thoughts, at the same time this was both easy (because dolphins make you feel wonderful when you are with them) and hard because of their plight and the helplessness of their circumstance.
After a magical 15 minutes, I heard the orca show winding up and said good-bye to my new friends. I could not resist taking a picture however and they seemed to know that I was just a tourist after all and swam off, I guess they know tourists don’t throw fish.
Buzzing with excitement, I called Julie and told her what happened. I wish she had been there to experience it too. She loves sea mammals, especially dolphins and would have found it as magical as I did.

The traffic on the Nice road caused the mini bus back to the hotel to be delayed, so we walked back up the hill. One of the guys found a short cut (the canny Dane ) and we were back before the bus. So I’m back in the hotel for water, Air Con and to write up the days events.

Bed time I think, as training anew starts tomorrow and it sounds a bit of a git.