Boy, am I glad I'm from Oregon.

It's a great excuse to stand in the rain on the deserted deck of a cruise ship, watching spray and waterfalls and waves and enjoying myself thoroughly even as I get soaked. Rain doesn't stop me from enjoying things, which in the case of Milford Sound is a very good thing.

I'm in Queenstown for a couple of nights, taking the weekend to see Milford Sound and make another tick in the tourist book. I have Done Fiordland, thanks for asking, even if it was only for an afternoon and the weather makes such an impact (not only day-to-day, but the monthly and yearly effects on the landscape of "tree avalanches" and snow and so on) that I think one could spend years there without seeing everything it has to offer.

But there are many such places, and I have limited years to spend.

There were bottlenose dolphins, close enough for me to make out the striated white marks on one particular individual's face; scars or coloring, I don't know. But they were very busy schooling along the shoreline, and we let the be.

There were seals.

I'm told there may have been penguins, or they may have been hiding in holes in the rocks while molting. I was drawing pictures for an Oma (mom) from Korea to illustrate the things we were being told over the loudspeaker; "here the anchor can touch the bottom" was relatively straightforward, but "molting penguins tend to hide in holes in the rocks until their feathers grow in" took a lot of drawing.

It was enjoyable, though. I sometimes get more satisfaction out of these difficult conversations, where everybody's straining to express anything at all, than out of the easy, casual small talk that's more common between native speakers of the same language.

Three minutes to closing, of "happy hour" in this Queenstown internet cafe; time to head out into the night-life of this active tourist town.