Early Mornings and Late Nights!

Sorry I haven't been able to post in a few days, but as some of you know I have an anatomy exam coming up on Monday and a Physiology exam that Wednesday. So anyway, I've just been really, really, really busy. Yesterday morning (Wednesday) I got to school at 6AM to walk the colony dogs, which meant I got up somewhere around 5AM in the dark. I don't know what Ru and I were thinking when we signed up to walk the dogs, but we made the best of it. As part of the AOCC (Animals on Campus Club) we walk the dogs for the second semester students when they have exams. I was excited because this meant I got to spend more time with Digger, the dog I really want to adopt (but we'll see how things work out). Anyway we got to campus at 6 and were responsible to walk/let out all of the kennel dogs. Only three people (including Ru and I) from AOCC and one other upper semester showed up to walk about 30 dogs. We had to just let a lot of them out into the grassy gated areas, but each of us walked around 4 dogs. They are supposed to be out for 15 minutes each so we barely made it to the anatomy lab for our first class on time. Unfortunately one of the dogs jumped on Ru and got poop all over her so "next time" we'll have to remember to bring a change of clothes! It was a really stressful event, but I'm happy that I did it because it helps the dogs so much (and who doesn't like playing with dogs bright and early). As the school day started it felt like it should have been over and I was pretty tired for the whole day. Wednesday was also our last day of Animal Nutrition with Dr. Reich as Dr. Naylor's part of the course started today. I liked Dr. Reich, but I'm sure I won't like his test questions as that's what all the upper semesters keep telling us. For the past few days I've been getting home around 4-5 and going back to the Anatomy lab to study from like 7:30-9:30. Today I just stayed on campus for a radiology review and to study more anatomy and we tried to get a horse to study large animal palpation. We tried to use Bosanova and he was not having it. Apparently he had been in a stall all day and was already on crossties when we got there so he just wanted to go back into the pasture. We tried our best to locate the Spine of the Scapula, the Greater Tubercle of the Humerus, the Deltoid Tuberosity of the Humerus, etc, etc, etc. We were getting frustrated and he was getting antsy so we put him back and that was that. Anyway, I'm slowly learning all of the muscle attachments and actions as well as all the ligaments, tendons, bursas, retinaculums, etc. that I need to learn for this anatomy exam. Off to study physiology because I can't forget about that! Hopefully you'll hear from me soon, but for now here's a beautiful sunrise picture for you!

Survived and Conquered!

So today was a very exciting day because I totally rocked my first exam of vet school! As I've mentioned previously my first exam was in MicroAnatomy & Embryology (in other words Histology). I went in extremely nervous and unsure of myself, but I survived and came out with an A. As many of you know I was not expecting that since A's in a cell based biology course have been a rarity for me since my days in high school. Thanks to all of you who believe in me!!! Studying pays off big time and at least I know I'm not doing all of this work for nothing. For my classmates out there who may not have gotten the grade you were hoping for just let it fuel your ambition to succeed AND remember if you passed that's ALL that matters. I'm hoping I can muster up enough ability to pass these next few exams coming up as it seems we have one or more a week for the rest of the semester. Right now I have to get on the ball and finally learn all those damn muscle attachments and actions in the canine thoracic limb, and oh yeah learn all of the parts in the large animal (equine and bovine) limb…Hooray!!! Since I don't have any pictures pertaining to my exam I'll share another adorable picture of Julie Kitty J.

Kittens, Cars, Oh My!

Yesterday was a great day for everything but studying, LOL. As you all know I have a test coming up tomorrow so this really isn't a good thing, but such is life. Yesterday was the PAWS (People for Animal Welfare on St.Kitts) Adoption Day. A bunch of us decided to walk over there just to look at the puppies and kittens that were up for adoption. I planned on talking to PAWS about fostering, but instead Ru fell in love with a kitten and decided to adopt her. This might be my fault since I told her in the car that I wasn't taking anything home, but she was a big girl and could make her own decisions. So now there's a beautiful little kitten living in my apartment. I think Ru has decided that her name is Julie (Jules for short), but she's been calling her Babes so we'll see what happens. The Julie is ADORABLE! The pictures on facebook and the one I'll put up her do not do her justice. She is so tiny with a big bushy tail and she's so elegant looking. She's most likely part Turkish Van because she has similar markings and she is super soft. So instead of studying all day yesterday Ru and I went to the store to get stuff for Julie and back to the apartment to get her settled in. She hid inside the plastic of the box spring of both of our beds for the good majority of the day, but I got her to purr for me so I was happy. Saturday afternoon we decided to test drive a car that Ru had seen for sale. This was our first driving experience on the island so I was really nervous, but we are both still alive!!! The car is a black '94 Honda Integra and let's face it like all of the cars on the island it's a piece of crap. However, the car drives really well and we test drove it up the hill so it is definitely good enough. The radio, speakers, and antennae were ripped out of the car by the previous owner because the system didn't work, you have to rev the engine in order to start it up, the passenger window doesn't have a motor so it doesn't roll down, one of the tail lights is broken, and the body kit is falling off the car. Those are the problems, but the car does run smoothly so we'll see. I think the asking price is a little high at $4500, but it's still a possibility. We are going to test drive another car today and see how that one runs so everything is still up in the air. On the way back from our test drive we found a lost sheep on our street. She belonged up on the hill with her heard so Alex just picked her up and brought her back up. I couldn't resist taking a picture. It was an exciting day of new experiences. After our fun we started studying for our microanatomy exam and we went through the TA mock exam and knew most of the questions. I've got a lot more studying to do today, but I think we'll be fine. I'll update you on how the Julie is getting along since right now she is still sleeping with Ru in her room!

Puppy Therapy :)

Full Moon

Well school is really starting to pick up and if I thought I was studying hard before, now it's just overwhelming. The past few days have been kind of a blur since it was only a four day week I've been kind of confused as to what day it is and where I'm supposed to be all week. I would be lying if I said that I didn't have time to write some new posts in the past few days, but I wouldn't be lying if I told you that I didn't really have that much to talk about. You heard all about my Tuesday in my last post so as you can see the week didn't start off that great. Wednesday wasn't especially exciting either. For anatomy I had radiology which is never interesting and Dr. B has started to teach histology for the next two weeks and I can't say I'm a huge fan. The afternoon was sort of eventful as Dr. Reich (professor for Nutrition) decided it would be cool to do a demonstration to start class. We were discussing ingestion of lipids and so in his confident fashion he takes a big spoonful of butter and pops into his mouth and disgustingly "chews" it for the next minute or so before he swallowed. Pure lipids right there and according to Reich the heart loves lipids (which it does since it can burn them for energy), unfortunately I don't know if his arteries feel the same way! In case you were wondering excessively fatty poop is known as, Steatorrhea. That's right I taught you all a big veterinarian word! Stinky, Slimy, Slithery, Silvery, Shimmery, Steatorrhea! Since I don't really remember Thursday I'm just going to say that it was probably just uneventful. There is only so much one can remember before everything just fades into a big blob. The only thing I remember about Thursday is Dr. Reich's pep talk which was much needed. Basically he told us that the Admissions Committee, which he is a part of, chose each and every one of us because they know that we are capable of doing the work necessary to succeed. The motivation to do that work is up to me of course, but at least they believe in me :).

Today was a great day because I had small animal palpation first thing in the morning and while we do learn important skills and information in this class it is also pure puppy therapy time. I've mentioned this before, but one of the most awesome things here at Ross is that the university has a dog colony which we have access to starting our very first semester. These dogs are used for palpation and other various educational things throughout all of the semesters. Today I worked with Digger who is an amazing shepherd mix. He's probably a little over a year old and he's such a good dog. I'm sort of in love. Anyway we went through and just felt around the thoracic limb as we are learning the basics of a physical exam. Most island dogs have gigantic lymph nodes because there are a lot of tick-borne diseases on the island, but Digger's were fairly normal and closer to what you would feel in a healthy dog back in the States. Anyway my favorite day of the week from now on will probably be palpation so expect to hear a lot about these dogs. On top of that I went to the first meeting of the Animals on Campus Club (AOCC) which is focused on taking care of the dog colony by doing obedience training, agility training, enrichment exercises, fundraising, and coordinating adoptions when the dogs are released from the colony. Did I mention that Digger is up for adoption in December? Yeah, so anyway these dogs make excellent patients and fantastic pets because they are worked with so much. Through AOCC hopefully I'll get to play with the puppies even more through training and walking the dogs while the second semester students have their exams. (The second semester students are responsible for taking the dogs on a 15 minute walk twice a day so on exam days AOCC volunteers to walk to the dogs so they still get their walks and the students get to study). I'm really excited about working with the dogs so expect to hear more about it soon!

In other news I have my first exam of veterinary school on Monday at 10:00AM. I'm a little nervous, but at this point I just have to buckle down and study!!! Anyway that's all for now I'll probably post again sometime this weekend or after my test on Monday.

The Tuesday of Technical Difficulties

Photo Courtesy of Ru :)

So today was a Tuesday of technological failures and waiting. Waiting for what you asked? Well I was waiting for something important information to be bestowed upon me. Unfortunately it was a day of tedious and boring lectures about nothing. This morning we had anatomy lecture where we covered how to use our clicker devices for answering questions for an hour and 20 minutes. This was totally unnecessary and such a waste of time. Seriously something that could have taken 20 minutes turned into a huge fiasco that ended up making us late for the second half of anatomy. For the lecture on the thoracic limb of the horse we were supposed to be in classroom 1 which is a little bit away from the anatomy lab. We were late to begin with so by the time everyone was settled we already had a late start, but to make matters worse all the technology around us started to die. The projector wasn't getting a signal from the computer, the computer wouldn't restart, the microphone wouldn't turn on- it was just a mess! After about 15-20 minutes everything was working again and the professor rushed through the lecture but she didn't finish. Apparently in vet school when professors aren't where they want to be at the end of a lecture they can schedule extra lecture time whenever is "convenient" for the entire class. I can understand why we had to make up our Nutrition lecture which was a whole hour, but 15 minutes, seriously?! Not only do we have to make up these 15 minutes, but the lecture ran until a few minutes 10am when the class really ends at 9:50 so technically they owe me time back in my opinion. After rushing to histology lab with literally a 6 minute break we find out that Dr. B decides to start 2 minutes early since he has, "200 slides to get through today". Of course this class couldn't be free from technical difficulties so Dr. B's mic decided that it wanted to sound like a terrible tape recording complete with loads of static. He pressed on with the lecture after figuring out that he could not fix the sound quality and we just had to put up with the horrible noise for the 2 hours of lecture. To make matters worse he went through the lecture at lightning speed so I'm not really sure what we covered since it was hard to keep up. After a frustrating morning we had our lunch break which was without mishaps, but I was still waiting for there to be some information that I actually cared about learning today. I was sorely disappointed with a full afternoon of Intro to Vet Med. One of the very nice professors gave a lecture on what to expect over these next 4 years and beyond, but really I felt that it was added stress that I didn't really need to focus on right now (stuff like the board exams, and foreign equivalencies, and internships, etc). From there we split up into 4 groups and my group had "Ethical Skills Lab". To be honest it wasn't that bad, but it was fairly straightforward and I think it took longer than it really needed to. I would have liked there to be more time actually spent discussing ethics rather than going step by painstaking step through the two ethical case studies we looked at. Anyway we were all done with school for the day and Alex drove Ru and I home. I talked to my mom on the phone for a little while and then got to work on some physiology. Today was a long day and I was so tired of studying after physiology I tried to motivate myself to continue, but I ended up making some black beans and rice for dinner instead. After dinner Ru and decided to read through the Palpation Guide and we continued to study for histology. We were getting a little silly towards the end so we finally decided to stop for tonight and that is that. Sorry for the whiny, boring post, but sometimes we all just have these days… I know you were all waiting to hear something amusing or whimsical, or compelling, but you'll just have to wait until tomorrow. To quote a t-shirt, "Vet School: It's hard…That's what she said".

Three Day Weekend :)

Contrary to popular belief my life really isn't all that exciting even though I'm on a beautiful Caribbean island, but I will continue to bore you with existence here. So the weekend is here and I'm pretty excited about that, but it also means that I have some down time to start missing people and stuff from home. After class on Friday we went to the port to walk around and then we went grocery shopping. I got to see the baby monkeys that the local people steal from the mothers and put in diapers all day so that they can convince people to take pictures with them for $20 US. Yeah the monkeys were really, really cute, but I feel bad for them and wish my first up close monkey citing was of wild monkeys. Ru got to hold a baby monkey while we were there and it bit her, but it was just a little nibble. I saw a monkey here one other time, but we were driving in the car so I don't count it. I'm still waiting to see wild monkeys! I'm getting a little tired of the food shopping situation here...everything is just so expensive and I can never find what I actually want. I spent Saturday on campus in the anatomy lab studying all of the muscles in the thoracic limb and tried to learn the attachments. Anatomy is a slow and arduous process, but hopefully I'll have time to go tomorrow and solidify everything I've gone over so far. I also had a histology TA session where our TA taught us all about "point and shoot", which is a great way to remember that the parasympathetic nervous system controls erection and the sympathetic nervous system controls ejaculation. We all found that amusing so I thought I would share it with you. After the TA session Alex drove Ru and I home and we studying histology for awhile before Ru was falling asleep and I decided to make some dinner. We had rice in the fridge so I decided to experiment and make some chicken fried rice. It ended up taking a little longer than expected and was only mediocre at best, but it was edible. As we were about to sit down to eat our neighbors Josh, Tracy, and their friend Heather bombarded our doorway and asked if they could come in because they were locked out of their apartment. We decided to make the best of it and played cards, rummy to be exact, which seems to be one of their favorite things to do. We all had fun until they could get back into their apartment. After they left Ru and I decided to go back to our original plan for the night and watched a movie. We watched one of my favorite movies ever, The Emperor's New Groove and we were both reciting lines the whole time so it was fun. Today, Sunday, we decided we needed a break and a bunch of us went to the beach at the Marriott. Everyone brought their snorkeling gear so Alex let me borrow her mask for a while and I got see some pretty cool fish! I got sunburn on my shoulders, back, and face which is unfortunate, but I still had a really awesome time. While we were there it started storming so there was lightening and beautiful rainbow at the same time which was pretty neat. It has been a fairly good weekend and guess what I don't have classes tomorrow. Tomorrow is St. Kitts Independence Day so it is the one and only holiday that the school closes for! I'm still planning to go to campus to study anatomy at some point.

Study, Study, Study...and Sex Jokes?

taken from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7242966@N04/485895008

I'm sorry for not writing a new post in a few days but I've been super busy! My brain is slowly shutting down from overload and so I figured I would take this time to take a break from the studying and share some things with you. Believe me in the past few days I have barely had time to blink so I'm really glad that tomorrow is Friday and that I have three day weekend coming (very exciting). So honestly I can't remember what has really happened since the last time I updated you all on my daily life so I apologize now if I repeat anything I've already told you or if I leave out a whole bunch of mundane details. My days are starting to blend together, but I think I can somewhat differentiate what is happening. Anyway, this week I had my introduction to large animal palpation and introduction to radiology. Large animal palp was pretty exciting because we actually got to touch a live horse and we will be routinely using these horses to learn how to palpate different muscles and tendons and things of that nature, which is really cool. This is one of the perks of going to a vet school out of the country; we actually get to touch live animals starting in our first semester (partly because we don't have certain animal rights groups bothering us about it). These horses are all geriatric horses (in their twenties and thirties) that wouldn't have a home if the university didn't purchase them and they are very well taken care of here. Intro to radiology was honestly pretty boring, but reading radiographs (xrays) is an acquired skill and having this early exposure will hopefully make me better at it for the future. Tomorrow I will have Intro to Small Animal palpation where we will get to palpate the dogs in the University's dog colony. So not only do I get to play with live horses, but I'll also get to play with live dogs (although not this week, but starting soon!). In anatomy we also finished our dissection of the canine thoracic limb so YAY!

Okay so I bet you're wondering about my title for this post aren't you. Well if you aren't then you are a crazy person. So it seems that despite the level of craziness exhibited by veterinary students, the veterinary professors greatly surpass this level; in plain English-They are Crazy!!! Over the past couple of days I've noticed a pattern to all of this craziness and it seems that sex is on all of their brains (possibly, maybe because it relates to the topics we are learning, but then again not so much). So the first instance of this craziness was exhibited by none other than our favorite Slovakian hero, Dr. Z who in the middle of lecture he addresses the class and asks, "Do you like sex, by the way?" After we all laughed he quickly said, "Oh no, don't answer! That's a crazy question", which of course it was, but nonetheless absolutely hilarious! Then today in nutrition Dr. R was going over why there happens to be a lot of glycogen in skeletal muscles. If you don't know glycogen is the storage form of glucose which the body can use for energy when we aren't eating food because the body needs energy ALL OF THE TIME and we aren't always eating. Anyway, he starts giving us this hypothetical situation where he says we are lying on our beds watching a movie when the door rattles and some "nastiness" comes in and our skeletal muscles must react QUICKLY to get away. He explains that while we were lying down watching a movie there wasn't much blood flowing to the skeletal muscles and then he proclaims. "We're not going to discuss where your blood was flowing" <wink, wink>. Then right after nutrition we have physiology where we were discussing the controls of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and the professor is explaining the organs that are controlled by each and when he gets to penis he took a long awkward pause so of course the entire class is laughing and he just says, "I don't understand every time we discuss this section the students always laugh" as if he is clueless that he was uber awkward about the entire thing. So yeah, basically all of my professors are a bunch of perverted crazies, but at least it makes life entertaining! Before I forget during our second session of nutrition today we were talking about how the mother passes on her antibodies to her baby so that when the baby comes in contact with the bacteria and ickiness of the vagina it is protected. Oh and did you know that giraffes give birth standing up? I bet you never thought about it, but that new born giraffe has to fall about 6 feet from the vagina to the ground in all likeliness on its head...welcome to the world baby giraffe, here's some brain damage!


 

My Little Slovakian Hero

Purple Dusk (view from front porch)

The title of this blog post is dedicated to my histology professor because even though I find histology very boring is a very sweet man with a great sense of humor (although I think most of what I find funny has to do with this heavy Slovakian accent more than his sense of humor). Regardless as a classmate of mine put it today, "He is my little Slovakian Hero". Today in class we started a new topic which is actually embryology and not histology, but technically the course is entitled, "MicoAnatomy and Embryology" so it's all part of the course objectives. So today we started gametogenesis which is the generation of the gametes or sex cells (i.e. spermatozoa (sperm) and ova (eggs). In our discussion of these cells my professor started talking about his block back in what I assume is Slovakia and he said, "All girls live there because all the mens die". He was explaining that while the rate sex in fertilization favors males, there are more females around because males die easier than females. Well maybe that's not funny if you weren't there, but I got a good laugh from it so I had to share it with you all. I finally lost him when he was talking about the "waffle cloud" that surrounds the oocyte (egg before it's an egg), but I later learned while I was studying the notes that this is actually called the Cumulus oophorus which sounds nothing like waffles when I pronounce it so I don't know where he got that from. So that was my exciting news from histology today.

In even more exciting news today in anatomy we finally removed the thoracic limb on our cadaver dog. I was a little afraid to cut it off and I completely mangled the rhomboidius and the deep pectoral muscle, but that's okay. So our little dog is now three-legged and has a very well examined left forelimb. Even though I kind of made a fool of myself when the professor came over, in the end I learned something. He kept asking what the different muscles were and of course for some reason my first answer for each one was "latissimus dorsi" which, by the way, was always the wrong answer. I surprised him though because when he pointed to the superficial pectoral muscles I eventually told him (after I said latissimus dorsi) that they were the superficial pectoral muscles and I correctly identified both the descending superficial pectoral muscle and the transverse superficial pectoral muscle. I was also really proud of myself for remembering the omotransvarsarius which for the life of me I could not remember yesterday!

Okay, I'm sure you are all sick of listening to me talk about muscles so I will move on to something else. So here is a disgusting, but interesting fact that I bet you haven't thought about before. Brought from me to you by my nutrition professor, if you think you are a vegetarian/vegan you are sorely mistaken if you eat things like pizza and bread (or anything with flour in it). Well let me explain, we all know that flour (or most of it) is made from wheat, right? Well that wheat must be processed and unfortunately insects like to lay eggs in the wheat plants and there is no way to remove them during processing. The FDA allows a certain level of insect chitin (the structural polysaccharide or carbohydrate that makes up the exoskeleton of the insect) in flour. So even if you don't mean to eat insects you are everyday! Sorry to all of the vegetarians and vegans out there, I know you are trying hard, but there is nothing you can really do about this one.

In other interesting news I broke my third water bottle in the past week, but don't worry because only the cap broke and I used my torch liter to melt the plastic back together and now it's good as new (well maybe not new, but it works). Other than that I've been doing a lot of studying and I must need more sleep because Ru and I were in hysterics over the fact that I've been particularly clumsy lately and today I looked straight into a light bulb as I turned the light on and walked right into the corner of bed and scraped myself as I exclaimed, "I hope I'm not breathing". HAHA still makes me laugh. Obviously I meant bleeding, but we both were crying by the end of our laugh fest. Also, did you know a person needs 12 hugs a day to grow? Bet you didn't! Ru needs a lot because she's short, lol (totally just stole her joke that I didn't even get at first)! Oh well, such is life!

Mr. RUSVM and a Whole Lot of Studying

Pink Sunset (view from front porch)

   So the weekend has come and gone and while I did have a few hours to myself it has been full of studying, TA sessions, and time well spent in the anatomy lab. On Saturday it was rainy and gross outside for most of the day so we went to campus to try to get some studying done. After an absurdly long time spent in the computer lab printing notes for the week, Ru and I headed over to the Multi-Purpose Lab to finish our histology lab which again took an absurdly long time. We had planned to go over to the anatomy lab, but we didn't have time since everything was taking us so long. We ate a quick lunch and went back to the lab for a TA session which was actually really helpful. We decided to walk home since our ride had to be somewhere else before the TA session was over. Anyway I will say that I never want to walk home again! After a 30 minute walk mostly uphill I was tired and did not want to study so I took a shower and attempted to take a nap before Mr. RUSVM. For those of you who don't know Mr. RUSVM is a tri-annual talent show where a male representative from each of the 7 semesters competes for the title Mr. RUSVM. My friend Mike was the rep for my class so we were obligated to attend. There were several categories and a choreographed introduction so it was pretty entertaining. I have to say that it went on way too long and it got a little boring after awhile, but overall it was a good time. In the first category they had to act out a "tale of St. Kitts" and those were pretty funny even if I didn't get some of them because we haven't been here long enough. Then they had to dress up like their favorite superhero. Mike painted his entire body green so he could be the Incredible Hulk, although I would have to say that my favorite was a tie between the Can of BOP (bug spray that actually kills centipedes, pretty sure it's illegal in the US) and Captain Planet. All of the costumes were pretty outrageous and it was pretty cool to see how gung ho some of the upper semester students are about this little competition. Then the contestants had to perform a talent. One of the contestants tried to play the improv game where someone stands behind the other person and uses their hands to control the scene and I must say that it was not funny and really made me miss the Pappy Parker Players, the best improv/sketch comedy group at Binghamton University. The last category was formal wear which was pretty funny since the guys dressed in anything but formal wear. The seventh semester contestant was dressed like an Egyptian pharaoh and had a bunch of people carry him on to stage. Of course the winner and newly crowned Mr. RUSVM was the 7^th semester contestant, but I knew that was going to be the case even before I saw the show. It was a pretty interesting night, but I wish I got more studying done.

 Today, Sunday, I took care of some household chores and then made my way to the anatomy lab to study the cadavers. I finally learned all of the extrinsic muscles in the thoracic limb. In case you don't know the thoracic limb is the front leg and the extrinsic muscles are attached to the axial skeleton (but you probably don't know what that means either). Anyway now all I have to learn this week is all the information for all the other classes as well as the muscle attachments, actions, of course all of the intrinsic muscles, oh yeah and all the bones and parts of bones in my bone box. The information is endless, but I feel a little bit better about being able to accomplish some of this stuff!

I Made It Through!

Early mornings waiting for our carpools

The Anatomy Monster

this is basically a Poland Spring bottle filled with vanilla extract...weird right!

Rainbow for the end of our 1st week!

TGIF!!! Seriously this has been one of the most difficult weeks of my entire life, but I made it through! As one of my professors put it today, I am now roughly (a little less actually) 1% done with my education here at Ross. I survived my first week of classes and I think this is going to work although it will definitely NOT be easy! Everyone in my class including myself is worried about anatomy as it seems to be ruling our lives to the point where my nutrition professor said the other day, "I'm here to remind all of you that there is more to vet school besides anatomy". Regardless I'm going to tell you all about anatomy anyway. Yesterday I received my cadaver dog bright and early at 8 AM and I must say no matter how well prepared I was for that moment it was still a little strange to see a room full of dead dogs ready to be cut into. That being said, after the first few minutes I was fine with the situation and proceeded professionally as we began the dissection. To save you all the gory details as I'm sure some of you reading don't ever want to think about the fact we dissect dead animals for educational purposes I won't tell you much more about the cadaver itself. Also, not sure if I mentioned this previously, but we were assigned a bone box, which you can see in the pictures accompanying this post I meant to take pictures of us studying the other day, but I was just too busy studying (so I guess that's a good thing). Anatomy is going to be the monster that gives me nightmares for awhile. It's just plain intimidating, but I'm sure I'll get used to it and hopefully learn to love it. Yesterday I didn't have histology because the class is split in half on lab days. I was scheduled to do my lab today and so was Ru so we get to be lab partners for that. Unfortunately we only had like 20 minutes to do the actual lab because the professors were lecturing for an hour and a half. This was very reminiscent of Microbiology lab with Davies if any of you reading this took that class. Anyway, Ru and I are going to go to the lab to finish it on Sunday and we'll probably go to visit our dogs in the anatomy lab as well. I got home today and just could not bring myself to study so I decided to bake some banana bread with the 5 bananas that were way overripe. Yesterday we went grocery shopping and I bought some vanilla extract and baking soda so I could bake something anyway. I mentioned I bought some vanilla and by some I mean like a 16 oz water bottle full of vanilla extract. You can see it in the picture above. It's made locally in St. Kitts and I noticed it tastes a little different, but it's good. Well baking was a little bit of an adventure because our oven went out again yesterday because the gas tank was turned off outside so I had to relight the pilot light by myself. I thought I was going to blow up, but everything worked out and I didn't burn myself. Then I realized that the only baking pans we have are a cookie sheet and a 10x15 (huge) glass casserole dish. So I doubled the recipe to fit into the casserole dish which was fine because I had so many bananas anyway. Then I realized that it was going to be more of a cake so I wanted to make frosting, but I didn't have any confectioner's sugar so I had to improvise. I found a recipe for frosting using regular sugar but it required heating it on the stovetop. Well the last time I heated up sugar I burnt myself pretty badly, just ask Corey or my old apartment-mates, but I decided to go ahead and try it anyway. It actually came out pretty good and if you are interested I will share that recipe with you:

Frosting in a Pinch:

1 cup sugar

4 Tbsp butter

4 Tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla

Optional: dash of cinnamon *I added this because I like cinnamon in my banana bread

Stir all ingredients except vanilla in a small saucepan and slowly bring to a boil stirring slowly and frequently. Boil for 1 full minute and then take off of heat. Add vanilla and place entire saucepan in cold water (I just filled a bigger pot with cold water and placed it inside). Let sit for a few seconds and stir gently until thickens. Beat to slightly whip to consistency for spreading on cake. Be careful because mine thickened a little too much and I had to run the saucepan under warm water to melt a little.

To Create a New Big Picture We Must Redefine All of the Little Things First

Today is my third day of vet school and apparently I lied to whomever I told that I wouldn't be writing on here for awhile. I have found that it gives me a great way to decompress after classes before I set down to study. Sorry about all the spelling/leaving out words/grammatical errors that were in my blog post yesterday, but as you can see (if you care to look) I haven't corrected them, because well I'm too lazy to go back in an edit it, LOL. Anyway those errors partly help describe my state of mind while writing which was just try to outpour information that would keep us both mildly entertained so that I could stop thinking about all the studying I had to do. Last night I got a lot more accomplished than I thought I would because we had the whole afternoon off and got out at 2 instead of 5pm which made a huge difference. Anyway, my point is that I will try to continue to write here to both let you know what's going on in life and as a way for me to get say a 20 minute break in between classes and studying!

Today, like every day I started with anatomy lab. My letter group was scheduled for Clinical Skills lab where we learned how to hold our instruments and we were timed to see how long it took for us to correctly move beads from one section of a container to another using these instruments. It sounds boring, but it was actually pretty fun and the hour flew by. Then, I got my bone box from anatomy (basically an assortment of canine bones that we have to memorize and get to play with. Today was also my first day of physiology which actually doesn't seem like it's going to be too bad, although the volume of information is still incredible. After classes I studied for a while with Emily and then Mike and Alex came over to study with us and my handy dandy bone box. We went through all the bones of the forearm and have started the process of setting them deep into our memories. I'm already started to burn out as this week seems to go on forever, but just two more days and then the weekend is here. Of course I'll have a lot of studying to do over the weekend, but I'll get to sleep in a few more hours and hopefully throw some fun in there too!

Vet school seems to be about pulling tiny details from everywhere, learning them, and then assembling them into a big picture. I can tell you now that anatomy is like learning a new language and the other classes are very detail orientated with a larger picture at the horizon. All of this information is leading somewhere (hopefully leading to becoming a great vet), but in order to get there, I've determined, we need to assemble all of the little details into a new "big picture" (kind of like those paintings that are made using only tiny dots of color, do you know what I mean?).

What I Learned In Vet School Today: Russian Water, Cloned Sheep, & Dolly Parton

Okay so this isn't going to be the most exciting post ever, but I need some way to decompress so I figured I would write a post. Today was my second day of classes and guess what…I'm still alive. It's a bit overwhelming, but I'm doing my best to work through it. So here's a compiled list of the most important things I learned today in vet school. Haha, ok so the first thing I learned was not get out of the car so that you not only hit a moving car with your door, but also so that you're water bottle doesn't burst out of your backpack and roll under the moving car. I also learned another important lesson regarding water bottles: Don't drop them more than once b/c they crack :(.  Regarding the second incident with the water bottle I also learned not to wear flip flops on a rainy wet day in doorways without mats to wipe your feet, you see you end up falling and banging your knee and unfortunately breaking your water bottle. Anyway all joking aside, I learned today that I should have taken an anatomy course in undergrad, if you are pre-vet and you are reading this I would HIGHLY recommend taking anatomy so it won't be so overwhelming. I learned that it is possible to both print class notes and go to the financial aid office within one hours time ( a feat I thought was absolutely going to be impossible on "Island Time")…I even got to scarf down my granola bar. I also learned that while I can't understand my histology professor he is a really funny guy and I enjoy his accent most of the time. By the way I'm still not over "nuc-le-oos", LOL. I learned today that my histology professor also calls vodka Russian water which I found hysterical. Apparently if you drink too much "Russian water" the alcohol starts to break down tight junctions in the terminal bars of the stomach lining cells which leaves those cells unprotected from the acidic gastric juices within the stomach. That's why some people experience "heart burn" the morning after they party to hard! Apparently this is how some Russian president guy died at some point…I learned that today too! Another interesting fact brought to you from my histology professor is regarding Dolly Parton's breasts (well sort of). So apparently Dolly (the sheep that was cloned back in 1997) was named after Dolly Parton, something I did not know before today and here's the reason why. Okay so when they created Dolly they took a mammary cell (if you don't know this, these cells in the breast) and implanted into a donor egg cell in order to create the clone. Since Dolly Parton has a very voluptuous bosom they named the cloned sheep Dolly. I think I'll end on that note, but I also want to mention that I learned today that deli chicken, hummus, American cheese, and cucumbers on a spinach wrap makes a very good lunch in case you have followed my amazing sandwich making abilities before and wanted to try something new. Oh and before I forget, I learned today that even though I've only known these people for a little over a week they are the most supportive and amazing people ever!!! Alright, I got to go study some important stuff for like a zillion hours so Byeee!

First Day of Classes & White Coat Ceremony

Today was officially my first day of Vet School classes and I'm already pretty stressed, but it was pretty exciting. My first class of the day was anatomy where we were assigned groups and the class coordinating professor ran through all of the scheduling and expectations of the course. It seems like scheduling is going to be the biggest issue with this class because sometimes it's like you have to be in three places at once since it combines dissection, radiography, and both small and large animal palpation. For any given day I'll be doing one of those while other members of my group go on to do the other tasks and then we will confer at the end of class. It's going to be pretty challenging, but it seems like the professors are really nice and really want to help us learn! After a break which was supposed to be 20 minutes, but turned into 10 since anatomy ran over time I ended down to the multi-purpose laboratory for Microanatomy & Embryology (AKA: Histology & Embryology). The class is split between two professors and the one we have now is from Europe (I believe Slovakia although I couldn't really understand him, LOL). He seems really sweet, but like I said he's hard to understand. I love the way he says the word nucleus, which he pronounces nuc-le-oose, haha. The class isn't the most exciting in the world and I've determined that I will most likely have to chug coffee during the 10 minute breaks in order to stay awake and get in enough study time, etc. At 12:00 we break for lunch until class starts at 1:10. After lunch we had Animal Nutrition which is promised to be our most difficult class. The professor seems pretty entertaining even if he's going to be really tough. At one point he walked out of the room screaming that he was done lecturing and that the chartreuse colored arrows were making him angry, only to come back in and say he was unchanged. Apparently it had something to do with homeostasis, but whatever. Our last class of the day, which would have been physiology, was canceled so that we could get ready for our White Coat Ceremony. We rushed home and got changed and rushed back to try to print notes before the ceremony began which was only a semi success, but oh well. The White Coat Ceremony was really nice. If you don't know what a White Coat Ceremony is it is an official induction to the veterinary medical profession where all incoming students are presented with their white coat and take the Veterinary Student Oath which reads as follows:
"At the time of being admitted to the school of Veterinary Medicine at Ross University, I solemnly pledge: To Consecrate my life to the service of both animals and humanity; to give my teachers, staff and classmates the respect that is their due; to conduct myself at all times with conscience, dignity, and integrity; to always provide comfort and compassion to teaching and client animals left in my care; to maintain the honor and noble traditions of the veterinary medical profession; to not allow considerations of religion, ethnicity, gender , sexual orientation, politics or social standing to preclude productive and constructive relationships with my instructors, staff, classmates, or clients; to never use my veterinary knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity; I make these promises sincerely, freely and upon my honor".

Anyway, it was really nice ceremony and there was a quick reception that followed where we all ate and took pictures. It's funny because even though orientation is over my orientation group all found each other and we hung out together during that time. We all had a lot of studying to do even though it's only the first day so we all split up to go home. Once we were home Emily and I tried to get into study mode and finally succeeded after trying to figure out how to use Ecollege which is a program like Blackboard where we can access our course materials. Although stressful, overall it was a good day. I can't believe I've started vet school and I'm here on this beautiful island…it's pretty incredible. This may not be what I pictured when I thought about what vet school would be like or where I would end up, but for now it sure is awesome!

Catamaran Snorkeling & New Moon Party

Captain Drives Boat with Feet!

Orientation Group :)

I finally got to sleep in this morning which was much needed. It was a slow morning and I did laundry (in the washing machine this time) for the first time since being here. It was our last day with Mr. Rogers today and he picked everyone up to take us to port for the Catamaran Trip. Of course I forgot my memory card for my camera in my computer, but Ru saved the day and let me use hers! She was on the earlier trip so we were separated today so it was a good thing I saw her before I got on the boat. My orientation group boarded the "Irie Lime" which translates to "Good Party". The crew was crazy and we all had fun watching them jump around. The captain even drove the boat with his feet. He was also the boat DJ and let me tell you DJing works a bit differently in St. Kitts. If they really like the song they will just replay it and I feel like half the time they share my music ADD. Anyway we must have listened to the beginning of one song about 3 times before he would just let it play because, "this is just too good to listen to once"! The captain also danced around the boat like a crazy person and even gave me a lap dance, LOL, which my classmates made him do again so they could take a picture of it. He was a pretty funny guy; he went up to Kiki and asked him if he was prostitute because he was dancing on the boat pole and then proceeded to tell him that he could never get any ladies back to his apartment (Good times!!!). We anchored about an hour out and jumped off the boat for some snorkeling at Shitten Bay (poor name, but it was pretty cool). This was my first time snorkeling and I was a little sad that I didn't see anything really cool, but I did get to see a ton of cool fish and even a cuddle fish so that was exciting!!! When we got back on board they served us lunch which they told us was monkey, but don't worry it was really only chicken! We spent some time talking to the crew who were all really nice. I got some great pictures and had a ton of fun, so as you can see the catamaran truly lived up to its name and I wouldn't mind taking another trip out on the Irie Lime some time! Later we decided to go out as an orientation group to the Shiggity Shak
for dinner which was really nice. I had a chicken sandwich and a mango colada which was delicious! After dinner we made our way over to Shipwreck Beach Bar for their New Moon Party where we were promised there would be crab racing, but unfortunately we couldn't find where they were doing them. Regardless of the lack of crabs we still had a lot of fun. That's all for now, keep in mind that I start classes tomorrow and don't know how often I will have time to post. I'll try to keep up regularly, but we'll see. So in the words of the best Orientation Leader, "Byeeeeee"!!!

Lectures, Leadership, Banking, “Salt”, & Digicel Party

Today was a very busy day and I started it a little bit grumpy due to lack of sleep. After trying to deal with financial aid and sitting through lectures about the rigorous coursework ahead we split off into groups to do leadership activities. After the official last day of orientation was over we headed over to the bank to pick up our checkbooks and debit cards and also deposit our financial aid checks, so now I have money! After 2 hours at the bank we went to the Caribbean Cinemas to see the movie "Salt" which was pretty good if you like action movies. I was very tired working on only 4-5 hours of sleep, but it kept me awake so I was impressed. Later tonight we went to a party hosted by the cell phone company on the island called Digicel. It was really fun, complete with a DJ, free food and free drinks. We danced and had a really good time. Dealing with the local men can be a challenge on the dance floor as they don't really understand the word "No", but learned the best thing to do is just walk away and they usually don't follow.

An Island Tour

So after a long and boring day of orientation lectures we took a long, but amazing tour of the island with Mr. Rogers as our helpful guide. St. Kitts is really beautiful and has a great history. I'm not going to even try to remember the historical details to share with you because let's face it I didn't come here to become a history buff I came to study veterinary medicine. If you are interested I'm sure there's a website or two (or maybe even a book) you can read about Caribbean Settlement or something of that nature. Anyway, what I can tell you is that St. Kitts was the first island in the West Indies that Christopher Columbus landed on so when he said he found the New World, he found St. Kitts. He named it after himself (St. Christopher) and was later shortened to St. Kitts (although St. Christopher is its other official name). Somewhere down the line both the British and the French decided it was a cool place that they could exploit for their sugar cane. They soon realized they needed people to build an infrastructure so they moseyed on over to Africa and brought down some slaves (from which most of the people who inhabit the Caribbean descend). So anyway the French and British split the land and that didn't work out too well so there were battles over occupancy. Today we visited Fort George on Brimstone Hill which was just beautiful. We also visited some gardens where I took way to many macro shots of flowers. We piled back into the bus as we drove around all the different areas of the island. Mr. Rogers showed us the place where the Caribbean and the Atlantic meet which was also pretty cool! If you didn't already know, St. Kitts is a volcanic island and while there is no documentation that a volcano erupted on a particular part of the island there is evidence on the shore line. This area is a called The Black Rocks (not to be confused with The Black Rock which was a slave ship that crashed on an entirely different fictional island, but it reminded me of it all day, LOL). Speaking of Lost, oh if you didn't know that was a reference to Lost by the way, the island of St. Kitts might as well be the Lost island between the mountain with the radio tower on top and now these black rock(s) I don't know how I'm supposed to draw any other conclusion! Although very busy, this was another great day on the island of St. Kitts!

Shopping & Karaoke

Today some people from my orientation group had to go to the bank in downtown Basseterre so while they waited in the ridiculous lines at the bank we decided to take the time to walk around Port Zane and do a little shopping in the capital city of St. Kitts. We went into a few touristy type shops and I bought a post card and monkey t-shirt and the guy at the store gave us a discount and a free scarf because we were Ross students. While it can be dangerous in that area we didn't run into any problems and for the most part people were really friendly. After that we went to the hardware store and the grocery store to stock up on things we needed for the apartment. Stuff is EXPENSIVE down here but we really lucked out because the hardware store is having a September sale so everything in the store is 25% off! After a very long day of shopping we rested up and decided to go Fusions for their Mexican Night with Karaoke. The food was decently priced and the place was hopping with new Ross students so we all really had a great time. I finally tried Ting after hearing everybody rant and rave about how good it is and while it was very sweet it wasn't bad. In case you were wondering, Ting is a grapefruit soda that is actually bottled on the island, so that's pretty cool. Also the night before I tried two different beers that are also brewed directly on the island, Carib and Stag. I was not a huge fan of the Carib, but the Stag wasn't bad (granted I'm not a beer drinker so please take any suggestions with a grain of salt). I sang karaoke with Emily (from here on out interchangeably referred to as Ru) and some others in my orientation group. We sang Living on a Prayer and Don't Stop Believing and someone came up to us to tell us that we picked awesome songs and we sounded good! We got home fairly late for having to be up at 6AM the next morning, but I think it was well worth it.

Ross University Orientation Day 1

Me and my roommate Emily :) *credit to Emily*

View from the gazebo

Today was a looooonnnnggggg day of paperwork and walking. We got on campus around 7 AM to get all the paperwork done for my student visa, driver's license, bank account, email account, student ID, etc, etc. I also got a tour of the campus that I will probably spend the majority of my time in for the next 2 ½ years. Unfortunately I can't post any pictures of the campus on the internet for security reasons, but believe me it is beautiful. They have a toxic plant garden, an aviary, and a turtle sanctuary where 14 turtles live in the bushes. Of course the school faces the Caribbean and the view is gorgeous. There is even a stairway through the woods down to a little gazebo right in the middle of a rocky beach. Also not sure if I should say this, but in my opinion the anatomy lab here beats the anatomy lab I saw when I visited Cornell so there! After a long day of paperwork we had a little bit of a break, but my internet was still out so there wasn't much so we decided it would be a good time to test out the washing machine. Well that was a mistake! We couldn't figure out why the water was filling up, but the soap was already in the machine so we washed all of the laundry in the bath tub, LOL. When we went to hang out our laundry we were surprised by Princess Buttercup, the pregnant dog who is staying with the girl who lives above us (her puppies are due any day now!!!) and we hung out on the floor of our back porch area for awhile. Then Mr. Rogers picked us up for a barbeque at Dana's (one of the orientation leaders) apartment complex. It was a lot of fun and we got meet people from two other orientation groups!

I Survived Hurricane Earl!

Uprooted tree

Hurricane Earl: View from my porch

playing cards

Hurricane waters from my porch

Didn't sleep to well last night because of the storm, the wind and the rain sound really scary here! Woke up this morning and winds and rain were pretty incredible (the pictures don't do this storm justice). The power/cable/internet all went out early this morning, but since we had a generator we at least had electricity. The storm ended up being a Category 2 Hurricane and while we did have some water come in, nothing in the house was damaged. One of our trees that grow this weird green fruit was uprooted, but the landlord said they would replant it with no problem. We met one of the landlord's son and our other landlord today and they helped fix the little problems we've had in the apartment so far. We now have a light in the laundry room and our pilot lights on the stove and oven are now lit and working! We gathered all the fruit that fell from the uprooted tree along with some star fruit that fell as well. Apparently the green fruit that is a little crunchy and kind of tastes similar to an apple is called a Duduberry in case you were wondering, because I was! The storm finally stopped in the evening, although there are still some strong winds, and we decided to take our neighbors up on their offer and we went to play cards with them, which was a lot of fun!

Shipwreck Beach & Hurricane Earl

 
So today I woke up to go grocery shopping with the Orientation group. Now of course I have been grocery shopping many, many times in my life, but this was a whole new experience. There was quite a bit of sticker shock as I went through the aisles. Let me give you an example. Coffee-mate coffee creamer was on sale for $17.99 EC, which is somewhere around $7 US and Kraft Singles were $12.99 EC (~$5 US). So anyway that was an experience, but at least I now have some food in the apartment! Later we all went to Shipwreck Beach even though we knew that the hurricane was coming. It was great! Shipwreck Beach is a black sand beach on the Caribbean. The water was warm and clear and even though the sun was hiding it was a great day for the beach. Minutes after arriving someone in my group stepped on a sea urchin and got a few barbs stuck in his toes. Everyone grouped around him and someone tried to get them out with a knife, which was unsuccessful. We were told after he got stung that the sea urchins like to hang out on the rocks and therefore it is a bad idea to walk on them so for the rest of the day we would all scream "rock" every time we bumped into one. Then we witnessed a dog fight on the beach. Apparently these dogs are neighbors and the big dog always tries to get to the little one. It was a little scary, but thanks to some helpful people both dogs were okay! On a more positive note we spotted a very large star fish and everybody took pictures with it! There was a small dock a little ways out and we swam out to it and sat out there for a while until the water started to get a little rough so we swam back. The wind started to pick up a bit but other than that it was nice so we spent a few hours in the shallower parts on the water digging around for shells and talking. I have quite the shell collection sitting on my dining room table right now! It started to get darker out so we all moved to the bar area where we sat and waited for our ride. While there we witnessed the same dog that started the last fight try to attack another little dog, but both were okay from that fight too! It started to downpour but finally Mr. Rogers came with the bus and we all got in. The rain stopped so Mr. Rogers decided it was a good time to take us on a little tour of the port area and downtown Basseterre. We finally got home and waited for Hurricane Earl to hit.

Day of Arrival: August 28 2010

Barbados Black Bellied Sheep

Dining on the Beach

Taxi Bus & Mr. Rogers

After what seemed like an endless day of checking luggage, waiting for flights, and of course flying I finally arrived in St. Kitts which will be my new home for the next 2 ½ years! I'm not going to lie, it was a very stressful and difficult day, but I survived and I'm hoping life is going to be awesome here. Checked my luggage and said my goodbyes, I waited at Gate 12 for my flight. Everything went smoothly as I boarded the flight and found my seat. It was early in the morning so I tried to sleep as some movie with Queen Latifa followed by an episode of The Office played on the screens. I landed in Miami at around 8:30 and promptly found the gate where my next flight would leave in roughly 2 hours. I met quite a few students who were also starting at Ross and we chatted for awhile. I stepped off the plane in St. Kitts and followed the other passengers into the airport where I was filed into the Immigration line. I handed my passport over along with my Immigration letter and after a few minutes I was admitted into St. Kitts. I found the conveyor belt with the luggage and watched for my 3 bags frantically for what felt like days! I finally spotted my bags and a very nice porter helped me carry them to Customs where a very nice Customs man looked through my bags. I left Customs and walked out to a big welcome by the many Ross representatives and my orientation leader, Scott, who were all waiting to help. It was very overwhelming, but my orientation group all came together and Mr. Rogers, our bus driver, drove us all to our apartments. The drive to the apartment was an adventure since driving is so different here than back in the States. Mr. Rogers and Scott helped me carry my bags to my apartment where I was warmly welcomed by my new roommate Emily and her mom, Linda! I got to my room still a little frazzled from my new surroundings and the lack of sleep and I started unpacking and getting settled in. As I was making my bed I heard a deep baahing sound and to my surprise there was a herd of, what I thought were, goats not 10 feet from my bedroom window. The "goats" are actually Barbados Black-Bellied Sheep, but I dare you to tell me you knew they weren't goats!