Stuck in Edinburgh...

So I woke up at 5.45am this morning and finished my packing and started walking to the bus stop. As I was going to the bus stop, I was thinking, "Hmmm, today is Sunday and the buses don't run that often, GREAT...", and sure enough, the next bus wasn't due for 30 minutes. So I started walking to the airport bus stop, which would have taken me 40 minutes at the least. So a taxi approached and I flagged it down. I got down to the airport bus stop and managed to catch the 7am bus to the airport. I got in line at the airport, checked in and made my way through security. So it was smooth sailing the entire morning and then my flight was delayed by an hour...

I waited about a half hour and all of a sudden it was white outside. A huge snow storm moved through Edinburgh airport for the next 4 hours and the entire airport shut down. One person I knew from class managed to take off right as they closed down the airspace. I waited until 2.30pm and when that time came, the flight status on the board said "Cancelled". I was so angry (and still am). I do not want to deal with this right now, I would just like to go home. The weather in Paris was quite bad so they shut that airport down as well because of bad weather. Now I have to work on trying to rebook my ticket and I was unable to get through to Air France because of the high volume of callers.

They open at 8am tomorrow morning, so I have my alarm set for 7.45am to prepare a long morning of trying to get through to someone because I'm assuming there are going to be thousands of people trying to get through to rebook their cancelled flights. I called Travelocity and they are going to try and get through to Air France and the guy with Travelocity said they have a direct line to call Air France so they should be able to come up with alternative dates for me to come. I'm really hoping they have flights available before Christmas because I will be quite upset if I don't make it out of here in time for Christmas. If I can't get through tomorrow or don't hear from Travelocity, then I'm heading down to the airport to the ticket check-in and talking to someone in person. I'm sure they can book tickets from the check-in counter with no problems. I officially hate snow...

To make things worse, I had to wait 30 minutes for my luggage and then buy another 6 pound return bus fare and then I picked up a city bus and managed to get on a bus that I thought went down all the way to my street, but it didn't. Let me tell you, pulling a suitcase in boots that have no traction (they are completely flat on the bottom) in slushy snow for 40 minutes is not my idea of a good time...

I spoke with a guy from Travelocity (after being on hold for an hour) and he told me they would call Air France via their direct line and arrange some different flights that I could choose from. He said to expect a call within the next 24-48 hours on that. So, I'm going to attempt to call Air France all day tomorrow, they open at 8am so I have my alarm set for 7.45am to wake up and get ready to start redialing all day long because there are going to be MANY people calling tomorrow morning to try and get a new flight. If I wasn't flying into Paris today, I would have been able to leave. Stupid snow, that's all I have to say. After all of these stressful exams and nothing but studying the last 3 months straight, this is not what I really want to deal with at this point, I really don't. Snow is only good for one thing, skiing, and that's IT! Even now, because of what the snow has done with the flights, puts me out of the "skiing mood" that I have been in for a while. Oh well! I guess things happen for a reason, so I'm just going to sit back and relax tonight and start frantically calling all over tomorrow and possibly heading down to the ticketing desk at the airport tomorrow. Hopefully I will be back for Christmas! I'll keep everyone posted! Wish me luck!

Finished with exams!!!

I am officially FINISHED with exams (for 2010)!!!!!!!!!! This day couldn't come any faster! I am so exhausted from the grueling days of studying that have taken place for the last 3 months and the last 2 weeks straight! We had Pathology today, the written portion, and it wasn't too harsh. I was able to answer the majority of the questions with confidence. I went to the pub at 3pm for a well-deserved pint of lager with a bunch of course mates. I'm going to head to Glasgow tomorrow to check out the Christmas market there and see what they have good to buy! I will be arriving in Phoenix at 9.30pm and I am really hoping that the flights here in Edinburgh will be unaffected by the snow that is about to arrive. Apparently London is experiencing issues with planes taking off and landing with all of the ice and snow they are getting. Apparently Paris is backed up, but I never got the full story on that so I am unsure of flight conditions in Paris right now. Darn snow! It's only allowed to snow when I am skiing in it...

Before I go, I have an interesting observational fact:

Why is it that if you blow in a dogs face it gets mad, yet when you take him on a car ride he sticks his head straight out the window?

I came across that on the internet earlier, I thought it was amusing. I do have an answer for the above question though, it's the same reaction someone gives you when you blow in their face and it smells like you have just eaten an entire loaf of garlic bread! I'm sure dogs feel the same way and their sense of smell is 50-100 times more sensitive than ours. Can you imagine smelling someone's garlic breath with a sense of smell like that? Blah!

Second practical exam over!

Today was the last of the two practical examinations and it was on hand washing and being able to demonstrate the proper way to wash your hands, which I am quite confident that I passed with flying colors. At times, the examiner was not even watching my hands and was talking to me about the weather and we were talking about me going back home for Christmas. You see, I had a strategy, and that strategy was to get the examiner interested in a conversation and she would pay less attention to what I was doing with my hand washing. It seemed like it was working too! Hehe, now for tomorrow...

Tomorrow is the Pathology spot exam where they will project images of pathological conditions/lesions up on the screen and we have to describe any changes/abnormalities we see and diagnose the condition as best as we can. As long as I can describe the lesion/condition I see, the diagnosis portion is worth a very small fraction of the total points for each question. The majority of the points are given on your capability to describe any changes you can see. Anyway, off to bed I go so I can get my full 8 hours of sleep in for the morning! Wish me luck! I'll post an update on how I did tomorrow. Only three more days and I will be done!!!

First practical exam over!

The first practical exam is finally over! I had my exam at 10.40am today. I went to the hospital for small animals at the campus and I signed in and was told to read instructions on the wall for what we were to be doing. We had to tie a simple interrupted suture pattern in a fake wound that was draped off with a fenestrated drape while maintaining the sterile field. So I went in and was told to put a pair of gloves on (just plain nitrile gloves) and then approach the surgery table. I approached and grabbed needle holders and rat-toothed thumb forceps and tied my suture. I thought I would be shaking but I really didn't shake all that bad. I cut the ends and laid the instruments back onto the table. The man that was grading me asked if at any point did I break the sterile field? To which I replied, "no I did not", and I am 99% positive I did not. The entire process took about 2-3 minutes and I walked out. Woohoo! One day down, four to go! Tomorrow is another practical (either gowning, instrument identification or handwashing). Whatever it is, I will rock it! Anyway, I should be off so I can study some more. Talk to you all very soon! Oh, and in just 6 days I will see most of you (granted that the snow that is supposed to arrive doesn't halt flights)!

10 Days Remaining!

So, 10 more days and I will be in warmer weather and home for Christmas and in just 17 more days, Kristen will be coming to AZ! This is going to be a GREAT break! I have just 4 days until the first exam. The first exam is only 2 minutes long and there are three stations and we will be assigned to one of them. I am at station 3 at 10.40am and not sure what I will be doing exactly. I think two of the stations will be surgery gowning / gloving and another will be suturing. My guess for the third station is bandaging and that we will have to apply a bandage to a dogs leg or head. Either way, it should be a breeze! Suturing is easy and gowning is second nature since I've done it so much! Wednesday is the first day of the written/spot examinations. Thursday we will be heading out to the campus and sitting in front of a projector screen. There, we will have to view numerous slides with different pathological pictures and we have to describe what we see and come up with a diagnosis and what the etiology is.

I am thinking of going in my pajama bottoms and slippers. Hey, it's comfortable and what better way to take an exam than to take an exam in clothes that are comfortable! Actually, I probably won't seeing as it is quite chilly out. So, I am reviewing systems pathology right now. I'm comfortable with the pharmacology and I feel like I'm going to go crazy if I go over the drug flashcards one more time! I still have some practice multiple choice Pharmacology questions to do and then I am officially done! I leave on the 19th, so I have a couple of days where I can relax and head over to the Christmas market. I may even head over to Glasgow's Christmas market. The snow has stopped and I hope it doesn't come back so that exams are not interrupted. That would be quite annoying if the university reschedule exams. They said that they might even have universities in the US proctor the exams. Hey, doesn't this sound like a familiar scenario? I believe that when I had to resit the exam over the summer, they wouldn't allow me to have it proctored overseas. Oh, but when it works best for them, it is ok? Grrrr!

Well, I should finish pathology here and call it quits for the night. Talk to you all soon! Wish me luck!

Snow Week!

So this entire last week was considered a snow week and as a result, I had no lectures. I was supposed to have revision lectures and one more practical, but they cancelled everything as a result of the snowfall and ice-laden roads. The have omitted the lecture material we were supposed to cover from the exams so that means I have less material to study for the exam! Not that it matters much, the last lectures were on NSAIDS and clinical pathology. The clinical pathology lectures were basically on how to make blood smears, the importance of chemistries/CBC and some other information on cytology, etc. All of that I have a very good understanding of from working at the clinic, so I briefly looked over those lectures.

I have 9 days before my first exam and still have so much to cover! I have finished going over past exams but have a lot of pathology stuff to cover yet. I'm confident with Pharmacology, as I have memorized over 200 flash cards of drugs and their pharmacological properties! Holy cow! I have never done this much memorization in my education! This is a major test of commitment to studying and a true test of my sanity! Will I or will I not go crazy after the next 9 days of straight studying? That is the question...

I went down to Princes Street Gardens a couple of days ago and took some pictures of the castle covered in snow. The pictures turned out very good. Aside from the two black dots that keep appearing in all of my photos...They have been showing up for quite some time now and when I switch lenses, the two dots are still there, which means it is something within the camera itself. Grrrrrr! I have no idea where to take it to or how much it would cost to have it cleaned or looked at. I think my best bet is to just invest in a photo-editing program and just erase the black dots. Anyway, I just finished eating dinner and am going to go over some more flash cards. Tomorrow, I start studying Pathology! 14 days and I will be back in AZ!! It will be nice to be back in warmer weather. Hope everyone is having a good weekend and I'll post again soon! Check the link to the right for a new photo album I just uploaded.

Snow Day!!!! Classes Cancelled Today and Possibly Tomorrow!

So today's classes were cancelled because of all of the snow we have been getting. So the buses were not running out to the campus and the parking lot there was too full of snow for any of the professors to park! There has been close to 2.5-3ft of snowfall so far since Saturday. According to the Scotsman:

SCOTLAND came to a near standstill today as severe winter weather forced schools to close and caused havoc for road and rail travellers. Much of the country remains under snow with more flurries predicted throughout the day. The Met Office issued severe weather warnings of heavy snow and icy roads in Grampian, Strathclyde, Central, Tayside, Fife, Lothian and Borders and South West Scotland. Around 3,000 homes in Tayside and Central have lost electricity.

Schools
All schools in the Lothians, Fife, Dundee, Perth and Kinross and the Shetland Islands are closed to pupils.

Trains
ScotRail warned those travelling by train to expect disruption, particularly in the central belt where further heavy snowfalls were forecast.

The main Glasgow-Edinburgh service has been reduced to twice per hour.
Trains between Perth and Aberdeen are also disrupted.


When it snows in Edinburgh, EVERYTHING comes to a standstill! I received another e-mail a short while ago stating that classes for tomorrow may be cancelled as well. I hiked up to Arthur's Seat yesterday and got to play in the snow! I hiked all the way up to the top. I think I was the second crazy person that decided to ascend the icy steps of Arthur's Seat. Once at the top, it was blizzard-like conditions for about 20 minutes. After that, it cleared up and the sun came out. At that point, I was able to get some really good pictures of the city and the mountains to the South with clouds hanging in the mountains. Wearing jeans was not the brightest idea either. By the end of my hike, the bottoms of my jeans were stuffed with snow and were soaking! I apparently kept myself nice and warm too! I had on an under armor shirt, a long sleeved shirt over that, my ski jacket, ski mask, hat, gloves and ski socks. Walking to Arthur's Seat, my body was so warm from all of the insulation that when the snow fell on my jacket, it melted instantly. My jacket was absolutely soaking by the time I got to the top of Arthur's Seat! There must have been hundreds of people sledding! There were even skiers and snowboarders at the top going down small hills.

The pictures that I took are uploaded into my picassa web album. Click on the link to the left if you want to check them out! Two more weeks and exams! Ahhh! I am almost finished memorizing Pharmacology and I think I'm going to go crazy! I still have Pathology to review. Only three more weeks and I'll be back in AZ! Am looking forward to the warmer weather. I do love the snow though, it gets me in the mood for skiing. Hope you all have a great day and I'll post again soon!

Christmas Market in Edinburgh and Happy Thanksgiving!!!

So the German Christmas market opened tonight. I went for the lighting of the tree and for the fireworks. The fireworks were quite amazing and they shot them off from below the castle. The temperature outside tonight was very cold, about 31 degrees. I managed to squeeze through the crowd of thousands to a smaller area of the market where they were serving mulled meade (spiced fermented honey wine) in a nice hot mug. There was such a large crowd of people on opening night. It literally took me 20 minutes to get out. The entire time I was wedged between several people. Was not very fun...

I may go tomorrow morning since they open at 10am and it will be less busy. That will give me a chance to go see the different stands that are there and I might be able to find a few presents there. Finished this week of lectures and next week is revision week for everything we have done. They are going to give us revision lectures. The week after is a self-revision week and the following week will be exam week! Ahhh! I've got tomorrow off, so have a three day weekend to get some good studying in.

I hope everyone has plans to eat delicious turkey? I miss being back home for Thanksgiving with the family. I will be having my big dinner on Saturday. There is a group of people hosting a party on Saturday and there should be around 18 people or so. I can't wait to fill my belly with yummy turkey! I'm going to prepare smoked salmon rolls for appetizers. Should be delicious! Anyway, hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!!

Dan = Winner, Mouse = Loser (and back out into the frigid streets)...

So, today I worked on memorizing Anthelmintics and have now finished about 1/4 of my notecard stack (and that's just for pharmacology). I have yet to begin studying pathology, but hopefully that will all come to me during the exam. I put together all of the images from our lectures and will study those in hopes that they will pick pictures that we have already seen in lecture.

So around 1.30pm, I was getting my shoes on while I sat at the edge of my bed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement on the chair in front of me. When I looked up, there was a little mouse, no more than 2 inches long (he was a fat little mouse though), and it was sniffing the blanket on the back of the chair. When I moved, he jumped down and crawled into my jacket. I grabbed a metal bar and hit my jacket and he hopped out and under the bed he went! Ahhh! So I removed everything from under the bed, put the big chair on top of my bed so it couldn't crawl under that and took everything off my floor so I could see where it was. I could see everywhere he went and he was so quick the little bugger! I finally trapped him in a corner. In a frenzied panic, the mouse shot out from behind my backpack and slammed into the glass shelf that I had propped up to trap him. I think he was very confused at what he hit. He was running so fast before he slammed into the glass shelf that I thought he had gotten away, but then I saw that he had stopped at the glass. As I reached over to grab the garbage can to trap him, he shot out between the pillow and the glass shelf! Doh! I was so angry because it took me a while to corner it. Then it snuck out under my room door into the hallway of the flat.

So, I put a blanket against the crack of the door and left to go pick up a weather strip for the door so these little mice can no longer sneak into my room. I decided not to get a weather strip after I spoke with the landlord, as she has one that can be slipped under the door instead of me screwing a new weather strip on. So, I got back about an hour ago. I have been sitting here working on notes and about 15 minutes ago, I noticed the mouse was back in my room! How did that happen? This time, I learned. I blocked his little escape route and repeated the same thing as before. He stopped by the desk chair behind a shoe. I grabbed the garbage can and shoved it against the wall along with the shoe (and hopefully the mouse). My idea was that the mouse would get so scared if I moved fast enough, that it would just run forward into the trash bin. Low and behold, my plan worked because inside the trash can was the little mouse trying to get out. Ha! Success! So I walked outside and let the mouse go into the street. So it will have to go find somewhere else to live. So, now that the mouse is back out on the streets, I'm going to continue studying. Hopefully that was the only one in the flat... It's getting very cold outside now (28 degrees yesterday) so I'm thinking that more of these blasted mice will try and get into the flat...

Warren Miller...Now I Am Ready For Ski Season!

So on Thursday, I went to the Dominion Cinema to go watch a Warren Miller film. Warren Miller is this guy who began filming skiing back in the 60's and he has continued to make movies since then. These films are documentary-style and include some of the most well-known skiers and snowboarders from around the world. This year's film was titled "Wintervention". It included areas such as Antarctica, Alaska, Colorado, Argentina and Georgia (the country). The theatre that we went to was the most comfortable theatre I have ever been in. It's a smaller theatre and the screens are small, but the seats are absolutely amazing! The theatre we were in seated about 200+ people. The chairs were black leather reclining chairs with nice wooden tables next to them for your drinks and in between every other chair was a huge black leather couch! Talk about comfort! I highly recommend this little theatre over the huge theatre downtown. They don't show all of the new releases as readily as the larger theatre, but they eventually come out. It just takes slightly longer. Anyway, it was a blast! The movie got me very excited for ski season, which will be in January or February sometime. I think I am looking at either booking a trip to Zermatt, Switzerland or going to Norway again. Norway was cheap and was a blast! I really want to go skiing now!!! The addiction has resurfaced once again, as it usually does around this time of year... I think Bill would agree with me on this, if I had all the money in the world I would be a professional ski bum! I would be chasing winter all year round, even if that meant going to Antarctica! Of course, my awesome girlfriend Kristen would have to join me, however, first she would have to learn to not fall into orange fencing ;)

So, 4.5 weeks and I will be in AZ!!! Getting excited! In about 6 weeks Kristen will be in AZ too!!! Double exciting!!! Ahhh! This also means exams are coming up quickly! I better memorize all of these drugs! I've gotten the Parasympathetic Nervous System drugs committed to memory so far, I have so many more to go though... Shouldn't be too bad if I memorize a class of drugs every day. Anyway, I should get going and continue on studying. Hope everyone is doing well! Can't wait to see you all very soon!!!

Reunited With My Macbook At Last!

So I failed to mention that my laptop (Macbook) was having issues last week. I had to get on the train last Friday and go to Glasgow because the only Apple store in Scotland is in Glasgow. That is stupid, I think Steve Jobs needs to address this situation seeing that Edinburgh is quite a big city in itself and it is the capital. Get on that Steve! Anyway, it rained the entire time I was in Glasgow, boo! I went to Starbucks for a latte and the line was so long, however, I noticed another Starbucks about 100 yards away that was down this narrow street. So I walked into that one and there was no one in line! I ordered my latte and then went to the Apple store to pick up my Macbook. The technician went over the bill with me. At first, I saw the total amount in repairs, which was about £536! I thought that was how much I owed and I was about to throw a fit because I have coverage and when I looked at the column next to that amount, it said that a £0 amount was due. Woohoo! Thank you Applecare! I got an entire new display (which is great because the old one had a small dent on the cover), a brand new trackpad and a brand new battery for FREE! I am just very happy that I have been reunited with my computer. I walked around Glasgow for a bit and went to some shopping malls and decided to go home after about an hour. I did some shopping around Edinburgh and am now working on studying for exams. I have to read this huge Fossums Small Animal Surgery book and the things in the first few chapters I have to read are like review. Tells you how to fold gowns, surgery towels, wrap instrument packs, how to scrub in for surgery, etc. Like I said, basic review. Well, I should get back to studying. Hope everyone is doing well and will talk to you soon!

Halloween and The Past Week

So Halloween has come and gone and I didn't even dress up this year. For starters, I had a good short week this past week. Unfortunately I missed a day of lectures because I was sick again (not shingles, thank god!), just a cold. I must have caught the bug from the 50 other people that were sick in class! There were a couple of days where I just could not hear the lecturer over everyone coughing! Ridiculous! The day I stayed at home, I worked on those day's lectures and kept myself caught up so I wouldn't fall behind. That's the last thing I want to do with all of the material that we are covering this year. I am loving every lecture, but sometimes the Pharmacology lectures are so boring. I suppose you can't make a Pharmacology lecture exciting though. This week has started off with Pharmacology yet again (antimicrobials) and Liver Pathology. I love all of the pathology lectures and the pictures that are shown are the best part! On Saturday, I carved a pumpkin with some people from class and yesterday I put my pumpkin out and picked up some candy for trick or treaters. I had 4 trick or treaters come by. It also must be a UK thing, but every trick or treater had to tell me a joke before they endulged themselves in a couple of handfuls of candy. One joke from a little girl was, "what do polar bears eat?", to which I replied, "sea lions", she then said, "nope, ICEBURGers!" (the drums played afterwards...bu dum dum ch!) So today, we had 4 lectures and now I am trying to keep up and rewrite them all before the long day that lies ahead of me for tomorrow. Hope all is well and I will start writing more often, I just got swamped with notes!

Birthday Karaoke

So I am officially 26 years old! I've now gone into the 'late' twenties, boo hoo... Had a great birthday yesterday. Well, first had lectures and a suture tying practical from 9am to 5pm and then had dinner at Daphne's house. Daphne is my landlord and she invited everyone that is renting from her, over for a big dinner. She had this squash, rice and ground beef dish and for dessert, she made fresh tiramisu! It was delicious! I went home around 7.30pm and got on Skype with my fantabulous girlfriend and had two presents to open from her. She had left me a bag of presents before she moved back home so that I would have it here on my birthday. Yeah, I know, she is quite awesome and I love her! She got me a new shirt to go out in, an album of photos that she put together and the most amazing book EVER!!! She got me "100 Facts About Pandas" and it's by this comedian that her and I went to go see during The Fringe Festival this year. The comedian's name is David O'doherty and he is hilarious! Here is random panda fact #1:

Hear No Panda, Smell No Panda:
-The panda smells through its ears and hears through its nose, technically making its nose its ears, and its ears its nose.

So, there is the first panda fact of this book. I will randomly post more facts at random or just whenever I feel like it. I think they are really funny and the pictures that go with the facts are even more hilarious! After I opened my presents from Kristen, I went to Electric Circus (a karaoke bar) and I reserved a karaoke room for 15 people. We had so much fun that we extended it by another hour. We were there until 1.30am and I was so tired when I got home, not to mention my voice was practically gone! Was a great time with friends from class and now I'm ready for a busy weekend of studying.

So I will be working on studying today and trying to keep up with the lectures. I finally received my small animal surgery book and have 11 chapters to read. So, will be busy working on that. Anyway, hope all is well back home and I will see you all soon for Christmas break!

Lost in Transit to COSTCO...

Today I decided to head out to COSTCO and buy some lunch meat and cheese that will last me for the next couple of weeks or so. So the 67 bus is not in service on Sundays so I took the 37 bus instead, THINKING that it would bring me right to COSTCO. I headed out around 10.30am and got on the bus. As we neared COSTCO, the bus stopped behind another complex, but I could see COSTCO in the distance. I decided to stay on and wait to see if it went any closer. Unfortunately, there was not a closer stop and I had to stay on the bus for another 30 minutes! On top of that, I had to wait for the bus to finish it's route and turn back around. Once the bus neared COSTCO, I got off and walked about 15 minutes to get there. I grabbed my food and headed back out to the bus stop but had to wait about 30 minutes for the next bus to come since they only operate every hour on Sundays. So, just to get a few food items at COSTCO it ended up taking me about 4 hours to finish! That's the last time I do that again... I am now in the midst of organizing all of the drugs I need to memorize for Pharmacology and it is going well so far. I got a small notebook that I am recording them in and then I will make a table and study from that. So far I am caught up on all of the lectures, which is very good and much better than last semester. Last semester it seemed as if I had an entire stack of notes that were just lying there and when it came to exam time, I had a difficult time finding certain lectures and certain lecture topics.

I signed up for a lecture that is taking place on the 28th of October. It's a lecture that anyone can go to, even the public. It's not a mandatory lecture, I just thought it would be interesting. They lecturer is very good too. He was one of the speakers in San Francisco when I went to the University of Edinburgh conference. Anyway, the name of the lecture is "Murder of a Heart Valve: An Open-and-Shut Case?"

Also, my birthday is coming up soon and I'm going to be OLD! 26! Ahhhh! Hahaha, just kidding. However, that means in 4 years I'm going to be 30! I have a present to open from Kristen since she left it with some of her things in Edinburgh in my room. So I have that and I think I am going to be organizing a big karaoke event at this place called Electric Circus. I first went to this place with Kristen and sang karaoke. It was just me, Kristen and about 10 of her friends. All of which were women, I was the only guy. This place is actually really neat. You get your own private room and you select songs on a touch screen TV. I think it's a lot of fun. So I will be doing that on Friday. I have practicals on Friday until 5pm. I also have a Suture Pattern practical that I am excited for. Anyway, I better get going so that I can get some sleep for tomorrow's lectures (hopefully none of them are with the Spanish lady I had on Thursday that I couldn't understand because she spoke at 200mph with a Spanish accent!!!) Talk to everyone soon! Hope everyone is doing well!

Shingles Outbreak Finally Regressed!

So I finished my last antiviral pill this morning and I can say that I have officially gotten over the shingles outbreak! Thank god! My head was in so much pain, even with the Ibuprofen and Tylenol I was taking. My lymph node below my ear was so swollen that I couldn't even turn my head to the left! Anyway, am very happy that I don't have the head pain. Now I just have numerous scabs that are very itchy and scabbing over. Tomorrow we begin our Oncology lectures, and I am still trying to catch up on a couple of lectures that I missed from staying home. I don't start class until 11am tomorrow and only have lectures until 1pm. I will most likely come home and immediately review the lectures and write up my own notes on each lecture. I finally got some of the books I ordered off of Amazon. I ordered the Plumb's Veterinary Drug Handbook (unfortunately I didn't realize that it was the full size and not the smaller size version) and a Five Minute Veterinary Consult book. I figured that it would help prepare me for final year exams since they will be asking questions regarding certain cases that we may be presented with in the clinical situation. I have yet to organize all of the drugs that I need to know. I am thinking of making a table of all of the drugs with their pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, contraindications, spectrum, etc. and studying them that way. For the doctors looking at this, what was the most successful way you studied for Pharmacology? Did you just throw together a big list and memorize it? Should be fun...

I am going out for a chinese buffet dinner on Friday with a bunch of people from class for a birthday party for one of them. I am possibly thinking of going fishing up in Busby this weekend, so not quite sure yet. I may go hiking too, will decide by Friday. Anyway, I should be getting back to writing up notes for this Radiology computer lecture. It's very long...

New Photos

Just posted photos of Perth, Scotland if you are interested at looking! Will post again soon!

Shingles...and not the ones that belong on the roof of a house...

So, after going to Perth with cold/flu like symptoms, I came home and had noticed a bump on the left region of my cranium. It seemed as if it had been caused by bumping my head. It was painful to touch and I just thought that it would go away on its own. Well, it did regress, but it regressed into a group of small red bumps that were VERY sensitive to the touch. The lymph nodes along the entire left side of my body were all enlarged and I was having horrible thoughts going through my head, "I'm too young for lymphoma! I haven't even finished school yet!". I'll have to admit, with the swollen lymph nodes, I was a bit concerned. So I scheduled an appointment with the General Practitioner (GP) near the flat. I waited an hour and when I was finally called in, I told the doctor all of my symptoms and that I was worried it was an ear infection because behind my ear was so painful. She said that it was probably a virus and that I would have to let it run it's course. She told me that in 2 minutes of seeing me. Waiting an hour for the doctor to briefly tell you that you should just go home and wait it out, grrrr. So the next morning, I woke up with intense pain on my face and head. The large bump on my head had completely regressed into smaller bumps all over that were very painful. There were two blisters forming on my forehead with one on my eyelid. Those were painful too. It felt as if there were red hot needles poking my skin in the areas of these blisters. So I called the GP's office and scheduled and emergency appointment since I was getting more and more worried and whatever I had seemed to be progressing even further. When I got there, the doctor saw me and noticed the blisters on one side of my face and immediately she diagnosed me with Shingles. So I am now on an antiviral medication 5 times per day. I'll have to admit, the first couple of days on this medication I wasn't noticing anything and the virus seemed to be spreading to more of the left region of my head. I look like I was in a brutal fist fight since some of the blisters are starting to heal and look like scabs. My head is still in a lot of pain and I am taking lots of Ibuprofen to cope with the pain. I woke up this morning and my eyelid is a bit more swollen and vision in the left eye was blurry and worried me, but it was my eyelid pushing down because when I held my eyelid open with my finger, my vision was fine. It doesn't seem to be spreading anymore and the spots where the blisters are, are no longer as sensitive, they are just giving me a headache now. It will probably take a couple of weeks for all of these areas to completely heal. I am going to the GP again today just to have my eye looked at to make sure it is not spreading onto the sclera/cornea. I don't think it is otherwise my vision would be severely affected and I'm sure it would feel like bits of glass in my eye if it had spread to the eye. All in all, I am doing better today I think and will hopefully be fully recovered by the end of next week. I don't know why the stupid chickenpox virus decided to come out and play again. I have been reading all over the internet that it just shows up for no apparent reason, more common in elderly people but does occur in younger adults under stressful situations. Anyway, I'm going to upload new photos to the photo section here. They are pictures of my hike in Perth. Enjoy!

End of Week Two and Heading to Perth

Friday has arrived! This week was not bad at all as I was out of lectures at midday and had Wednesday off. On Wednesday we were supposed to meet with our Director of Studies (DoS). However, I did not make it to my meeting with my DoS (there is a good explanation for this, so no, I didn't decide to sleep in). The night before, I had checked my account to see if there were any important notices on the notice board prior to going to bed. There was a notice saying that my DoS had changed her meeting time from 11am to 9.30am and it had the room number of where we were meeting at. So, I went to bed and woke up around 8am. Not remembering what room number she was going to be in, I went to go check the notice board for a second time on the morning of and it was no longer on the notice board. So it got me thinking, "did they revert back to the original scheduled time or did the notice just get taken down for some oddball reason?". So I figured I would just catch the 8.23am bus to the school. Unfortunately, as I walked out the door, the 8.23am bus drove right by before I was able to make it to the bus stop! Doh! So I went back inside and studied for a couple hours and then went back to the bus stop for 10.23am. I got on the bus and about 2 minutes into the ride, I had a feeling that the meeting was kept for 9am and that I should check my email on my phone before I get all the way to the school. Sure enough, there was an email in my inbox from my DoS stating that the 9am meeting was kept and that I had missed it along with several others and that I should reschedule the meeting. So, I stayed on the bus and got off at COSTCO and IKEA. I have never been inside of an IKEA before and it was ok. I had breakfast inside (asked for a breakfast ciabatta and got a full Scottish breakfast instead. Wondering how that happened?) Oh well, I didn't say anything and just took what was given to me. After breakfast, I went to COSTCO and it made me feel like I was back home! Everything is set up the same and there are quite a bit of the same products there as back home. I got a space heater, HUGE box of granola bars, steak and cheese.

I brought along a duffle bag and a backpack to bring everything back in, worked out quite well! I got home and tested the space heater and man does it work well! Heats up my room great! No one at the flat here has turned on the heat yet and it has been down in the mid 40's at night. Too bad for them, I've got my handy space heater so my room is nice and toasty all of the time now.

Today, before the tutorial, I also bumped into Wilson, who works out at Langhill Farm. I had my placement there before last year and Wilson gave me my cattle handling examination. Well, unfortunately I bumped into him and got stuck talking to him...Ha! Just kidding Wilson... Was nice catching up with Wilson and always enjoy the laughs buddy! Not sure if you will read this, but just wanted to give you a hard time... ;)

Today we had a bandaging practical where we had to learn a Robert Jone's Wrap, was quite easy since I've seen it done a number of times back home at the clinic. I was the only one in the group of 30some students that had ever wrapped a dog's leg with a bandage. We had a springer spaniel that just laid on the table while we bandaged the leg. We also had to learn how to wrap the head in a bandage as well for things like aural surgeries and such. Was quite easy and then I got on the bus home. I just purchased the university bus pass which gives us access to the hired coaches up until next year for 78 GBP versus paying almost 400 GBP on the city bus pass for 9 months! The bus that I was on today broke down and the driver had to call a smaller van to come and pick us up. I thought I was going to die it was such a rough ride home and the driver does not know how to drive manual apparently because he's always letting up on the gas too much and the bus/van jerks forward constantly. Got home safely though, so thankful for that!

I will be heading to Perth tomorrow on the 8am train, so I need to get myself out of bed around 6.30am, blah! Should get to Perth around 10am and am just going to go check out the city and go hiking in the nearby woodlands by myself. I find it relaxing to just go and do things on my own sometimes. I will post some pictures up on the photos link tomorrow, so check for new photos! I'll just make a new post tomorrow and the pictures will go up at the same time. Anyway, off to bed so I can get out of bed in the morning (or attempt to get out of bed in the morning). Talk to everyone soon!

Start of Second Week of Lectures After a Relaxing Weekend

So, the first week of lectures has gone by in a flash. So many interesting lectures and so much learned. We started going over the clinical examination of the horse, which was interesting. Was basically 2 straight hours of staring at a powerpoint presentation with lots of images of mucous membranes, emaciated horses, horses with edema, horses with exaggerated heave lines, etc. Was a great tutorial, I loved it! The weekend has gone by so quickly with most of it spent writing notes down and going over last weeks lectures and putting them down into note form. I've gotten very organized this semester, so hopefully it will make it much easier to reference back to certain areas of the notes. On Saturday, I stayed at the flat and worked on notes. However, on Sunday, I managed to get myself out of the flat and walk down to Princes Street Gardens (Camera in hand) to take to pictures on such a beautiful sunny day. I managed to get lots of photos of bees, flowers, mushrooms, buildings, etc. I walked into HMV for a bit to see what new DVDs were out and then walked home. This week's lectures have been quite interesting so far. We have gone over more Pharmacology, surgery, etc. Today we went over suture material, which was interesting. I know most of them already, but now it's time to learn their absorption time, tensile strength, advantages/disadvantages, etc. I've been lucky enough to work at AHS for 6 years where I have learned quite a bit from all the very smart doctors there! I've learned so much from all of the doctors there and it has helped TREMENDOUSLY with my understanding of everything!

So, the remainder of this week's lectures are light, with me getting out early every day. Wednesday we have off so that we can meet with our Director of Studies. I am still awaiting the loan cheque to clear so that I can go buy groceries and note taking supplies. I'm almost out of paper, so need that loan money soon! The weather is getting quite rubbish here with temperatures dropping to about 38 degrees now. Burrrrrr! Time to bust out the heavy duty ski jacket!!! Unfortunately, I am without a raincoat, and desperately need one as the rain shall soon start to fall here in Edinburgh. Well, I should get back to being studious. Hope everyone is doing well and I will be posting new photos soon, so stay on the lookout! Cheers!

First Week of Classes Almost Over!

This week has been quite busy with lectures and such. Monday, we had all of our introductory lectures and began a couple of Pharmacology lectures. The Pharmacokinetics/Pharmacodynamics lectures were very interesting and got me very excited for the next lectures. We started Pathology as well and I really enjoy those lectures. The Radiologist came in and gave a few lectures on interpreting radiographs and showed many images of radiographs, which were interesting. Almost all of the lectures were quite a breeze for me since most of it I have picked up on my own from working at the clinic. There was also an introduction to small animal surgery, piece of cake! Instruments used, anaesthesia, etc. We are currently working on post mortem lectures, which are very interesting and we get to do our first PM tomorrow! Woohoo! Am very excited and can't wait! There was a two hour tutorial on the clinical examination of the horse today and I found that very helpful. I was rocking out the answers to all of the questions the lecturer had, I patted myself on the back after class... Right now I am working on writing out notes from all of the lectures, printing the lectures and putting them in an organized binder. I am MUCH more organized than last semester, so this will help tremendously when studying. The weather hasn't been the greatest today and has been raining the entire day, boo! Have been loading up on hot tea at night to keep myself warm. May go out tomorrow night for Paddy's (guy in class) birthday. Not sure yet, I don't like spending money that I don't have to. Well, I should get back to studying. Hope all is well in the desert! Send some warm weather my way please!

Run to Arthur's Seat

So, no jet lag from the trip, which is a GREAT thing! I woke up around 8.30am today and went to TESCO to buy some breakfast foods. After eating, I went for a run to Arthur's Seat. It felt so good to run, I haven't run for over 5 months and haven't been doing much working out since my shoulder injury. While at Arthur's Seat, I picked a bunch of blackberries from the many bushes around the area. I walked away with a good half pound of blackberries, which will go great with my yoghurt in the morning. After suffering many pokes from the sharp spines on the bushes while gathering blackberries, I headed back. It started to rain on me, so it was great timing that I headed back home. Since I hadn't run in a long time, the run back home was quite rough on the knees. I arrived at home and was so tired! There is a barbeque today, so not sure if I will go or not. I would need to pick up food, which I am trying to be conservative about until my loan comes through. I am living and eating very cheaply right now, so need to be careful with what I spend my money on. Classes start Monday and I'm quite excited. We are doing a lot of lectures on surgery, pharmacology, anesthesia, etc. Should be loads of fun. I can't wait! Anyway, hope all is well back on the homefront and I will talk soon!

Back in Edinburgh

So after a long flight back and a couple of layovers, I am back in Edinburgh. When I arrived to the city yesterday, the bus did not drop me off where it usually does. It dropped me off away from Waverly Bridge because Princes Street was closed down for the Pope to come through. There were news vans all over the place and a lot of people began to line up at 9.30am for his 1.00pm appearance. I was too tired to care, so I went home. Even though I was tired, I felt that I needed to move everything to the flat from the garage of the old flat. So I got a day pass and made 4 trips to move my things. After I moved it all, I had no idea where to start! There was so much stuff! I also wanted to email everyone but had no internet and my iphone was not working because apparently they changed my phone plan from a iphone tariff to a non-iphone tariff, so that meant I had no internet. I went to the O2 store and called and they changed it back for me, but it wasn't going to take effect until this morning. Florian, my flatmate, had the internet password and was gone all day. It wasn't until midnight that I was able to log on. I was so tired from not sleeping for over 24 hours that I slept until 12.30pm today! I guess my body needed the sleep, eh? So, did a lot of unpacking and am now getting used to the flat. I like it a lot more than the previous flat mainly because I don't have the same flatmates and also because I have MASSIVE amounts of storage and a huge room. I literally have an entire wall of cabinet storage, just great! Classes start up on Monday, so need to get everything together for that. I am getting excited to start a new year. Lots of new things to learn and I am one more year closer to being finished! Woohoo! Well, hope everyone is doing well, will talk soon!

Last Day in Canada :(

So today is my last day in Ottawa, and I am sad to be leaving. After getting to know Kristen's family, it feels like it has been too fast of a trip. Kristen is now going to be living back home permanently and will not be returning to Edinburgh. So we are now in our long-distance phase of our relationship. It will be very difficult but we will get through it. These last few weeks have been absolutely amazing and I have been taken to so many places. The trip to Niagara was by far one of the best and getting to know Kristen's Uncle Ennio and Grandma was nice. Kristen and I went to Pellar Wine Estates and took a wine tour. We got to taste grapes fresh off of the vine. We tried grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. We were also taken down to the wine cellar to taste different wines. I loved the Cabernet Franc Ice Wine. I wanted to buy a bottle of it but a 375ml bottle cost $90! Very expensive for such a small amount. We took many pictures and they are all uploaded to the photo section. I have uploaded about 400 photos for everyone to look at as well. We went to Niagara Falls and took a ride on the Maid of the Mist. We got so wet and it was so windy in the falls. The water was moving ridiculously fast! Was such a fun time and Kristen's Uncle Ennio is hilarious! My grandpa would get along with him so well.

Kristen's father and I went fishing a few days ago and spent a few hours on the water in his boat. I kept on catching small perch and stupid sunfish! Lou caught almost a dozen bass and kept 3 large ones. We had to bring the boat in early because the engine kept on cutting out. We went home and took the plug off the back of the boat and loads of water came rushing out! We opened the engine door and there must have been a leaky hose because there was so much water in the engine compartment. We had the bass for breakfast the next morning along with eggs, bacon and some other stuff. It was delicious! Kristen and I have been hanging out and making a scrapbook of all our memories. We've got a long way to go before finishing the scrapbook but it looks good so far! Kristen and I made stir-fry for the family yesterday and it turned out very good. Today we are just going to take MacKenzie to the dog park and do a little bit of shopping. I have a 1.15pm bus tomorrow to Montreal and then my flight to Paris, then Paris to Edinburgh. I will be so sad to leave but also excited to start the new school semester. I will be heading back for the Christmas break and Kristen will be coming back as well. I can't wait until Christmas break! Will be such a great time! So many places to show Kristen and so many people for her to get to know.

Well, better get going here. Remember to check the photos that I posted, there are LOTS of them! Hope everyone is doing well and will talk soon!

Canadian Fishing

So today, I experienced my first taste of Canadian fishing. Kristen's dad and I packed up fishing gear and headed down towards the dam to do some fishing. First we stopped by this boat launch and casted into the water for about a half hour. I managed to catch a sunfish and that was about the extent of what Lou and I caught. We then drove to the dam and walked down to the water. Lou caught a couple of small mouth bass and I caught nothing. After that, we basically kept the fish fed. I would cast my line in the water and within seconds, all of the little fish would nibble my worm off! I started using the artificial worm instead because I was getting so sick of losing my worms. We finally decided to go home after the storm clouds started to roll in. We got back to the house and charged the boat and are planning on going after dinner out into the water. Hopefully we will have better luck tonight. Large mouth bass perhaps? Pike? Perch? Anything?! Clouds are still over the house, so may not be able to go out on the water tonight. Only 11 days left here, boo hoo! I am having a lot of fun here and love getting to know Kristen's parents. Hopefully these last 11 days don't go by too fast. I get back to Edinburgh on the 15th and have a week off until classes start up again. Hope everyone is doing well and will talk to you all soon!

Hot and humid day in Ottawa and finally, EXAM RESULTS!!!

So this week has been a blast. I have had such a great time getting to know Kristen's family and really feel as if I have known them for the longest time. We had a barbeque a couple of days ago for Kristen's graduation and there was A LOT of food! Yesterday we had a nice dinner and ate some of the left-overs from the party. We went for a walk with MacKenzie (Kristen's golden retriever) along the Rideau Canal. There was this tunnel on the way down to the waterway that had hundreds of spiders hanging from the ceiling, I was a little nervous walking through the tunnel. They were quite big and fat spiders too. Gave you chills walking through the tunnel! We went down to the dam of the canal and one of the doors of the dam was open quite a bit and the raging water was a site to see! Got lots of pictures and will be posting them today. I've got many pictures, so will be posting all of those as soon as I can. Kristen and I then took MacKenzie to the dog park afterwards and had a great time, but didn't stay too long because it was so hot and humid out. This morning, I woke up and Kristen and I had breakfast. Afterwards, we both decided to check our exam results. I was so nervous checking, so I had Kristen look at the grade for me. I ended up with 52 mark on the exam! Wooohooo! I passed the exam! They must have capped the exam off too because it was such a weird number to have ended up with on the written portion. Kristen says that on a re-sit examination, they usually cap off the mark that you are able to achieve. So I'm assuming that my grade was capped off. Anyway, yay that I passed! Kristen went to check her mark and her results weren't up yet but should be in the next half hour or so. Today we are going to Gatineau Park to go for a hike and then we will go canoeing later on in the day. Should be a lot of fun. I've never canoed before, so hopefully I will not tip the canoe over! If I do, I can guarantee that there will be pictures...

Exam over! Now in the land of maple syrup and poutine!

So the exam is now over and has been over for a little over a week now. Two months of studying sure prepared me for the exam and I was much more prepared than the last time. The first attempt at the exam I had barely studied because I was down in England lambing so had no time to prepare for the exam and I decided to just cram for two days and hope I would do well on the exam. This time I had plenty of time to study. Although I wasn't sure about two of the short answer questions, I managed to answer all other questions and there were two questions that were exactly the same as on previous exams that I had studied. So I was glad for that. I hopefully answered the other questions correctly, or at least get partial points for. Still waiting for results to show up on my university account. I will check on Monday to see, but most likely the grades will not be posted for another week or two knowing how fast the university is at posting grades. Kristen finished her last exam and had it on the same day and same time as I had my exam. We had about a week to do things around Edinburgh and to get her moved out of her flat. It took some time, but we managed to clean and get her all moved out. We spent the last couple of days down at my flat and left on the 25th of August for Canada. We flew into Paris, then into Montreal and then took a bus (that was an hour late, ugh!) and arrived at the Ottawa rail station where I met Kristen's parents for the first time (well, in person for the first time since I have already spoken with them on skype numerous times). I am now in Ottawa at Kristen's house and will be here for 3 weeks. The weather has not been too bad, cloudy and it rained yesterday but the temperature is nice. Not as cold as Edinburgh and definitely not as hot as Arizona! Still have to unpack but will do that later today. Will be doing plenty of site seeing while here and relaxing! Will be nice to have a vacation where I don't have to study! Hope everyone is doing well and will update soon! Sorry for the long delay in posting, but was very busy back in Edinburgh. Talk to you all soon!

Back in the UK!

After 18 hours of travel, I finally made it back to Edinburgh yesterday. I left from Phoenix to Atlanta at 7.15am and arrived into Atlanta's airport after 3 hours of air travel. I was surprised that the airport did not smell of the pungent vomit-smell that I had initially smelled the previous time I was in Atlanta. In Atlanta, I spent the next 4 hours (my layover) studying in Gate E14. Yes, I know, sounds fantabulously exciting, doesn't it? I finally left Atlanta and headed to Paris CDG airport. I began my 9 hour flight at about 5.50pm Atlanta's time. I spent 9 hours of watching movies and sleeping. I did not bother studying because I figured I would either fall asleep or get frustrated with the little room I had to put things. I arrived to Paris after the long flight and proceeded through the security check point to which I was frisked by security twice because I beeped going through the metal detectors. I'm assuming it was my button on my jeans because I had nothing else on me. I then was called back through the metal detector to remove my camera from my backpack. I thought you only had to remove laptops? For some reason, the lady made me remove my digital camera and put it on the belt separately. I had to walk through the metal detector again to get back through and of course, I beeped again. The same guy frisked me again. I was thinking, "Really? This guy just checked me not more than a minute ago and he is checking me again?". I had no problems with it, I just laughed inside. Then a lady had to check my backpack after it went through the machine. Wow, after about 15-20 minutes through security, I was finally able to walk over to my gate. There were so many leaks on the airport ceiling! They had buckets everywhere collecting the water. It was pouring outside too! I sat in the airport and waited for my flight. After 2 hours, I was able to check in and head to the plane. At first, I thought that we were going straight to the plane. However, they put us all on a bus and we drove around the airport for 15 minutes before getting to the plane. I think the plane was on the other end of the airport! Crazy! After 1.5 hours on this flight, I was finally in Edinburgh where Kristen met me at the exit! We were extremely excited to see each other! We got onto the bus and headed to the city center where we had lunch at subway and then Kristen left on a train to go to her university and study. We both have our exams tomorrow at the same exact time. Wish us both luck! Well, I should get back to studying here. Hope everyone is doing well and that the weather is nicer than Edinburgh's!

Back in the US!

So, after a wonderful time in Paris with Kristen and a day in Loch Lomond with Kristen, I am back home. Paris was absolutely amazing. The Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Moulin Rouge, Pantheon, The Opera, Luxembourg Garden, Notre Dame, Arc du Triumphe, Catacombs, etc. We did so much while in Paris, and Paris truly is a romantic place. We had several picnics in the gardens, which consisted of wine, fruit, chocolate, and bread. Was such a relaxing time in Paris. The Eiffel Tower was great and was even more amazing at night when the tower glowed with the thousands of lights that lined it. Aside from the thousands of people that nagged you for money, it was a great experience. The Louvre was amazing and seeing the Mona Lisa and the statue of Venus de Milo. It was so relaxing outside of the Louvre sitting next to the fountains and relaxing. We enjoyed the Louvre so much that we returned two more times after the first visit just to sit by the fountains and relax. However, before reaching the Louvre, we walked through the park for fresh sorbet. I had the best mango sorbet ever! The catacombs were eery and very disturbing. Apparently, in Paris, the cemeteries became full and there was no more room for new burial sites. So, to buffer this, the city exhumed all of the bodies in the cemeteries and moved them below ground in the catacombs. There were literally thousands of bones and skulls all stacked up on top of each other. There are a few photos that I took. The most disgusting part of the whole catacomb visit was that at the end of the 45 min walk, they would check your bags to make sure you didn't steal any bones. How disgusting is that? Why would you want to steal human bones? There were two skulls that the man had already confiscated from other tourists. Down right disgusting is my only comment about that. We went back to the Louvre after the catacombs and relaxed by the beautiful fountains that surround the triangular structure that is the main building.

We walked around a bit more and planned for our last day in Paris for the next day. We figured that we would do some more exploring and see the Pantheon and have a nice meal at a restaurant. We first sat down at this bar and had a beer each and enjoyed the sunshine. Directly across from this bar was a nice little quaint restaurant where we decided to have our nice meal. Since we were in Paris, I felt that I had to try Escargot. I ordered six of them and they came with a garlic-butter sauce, which was very good. However, once is enough for escargot (for me at least). I then had steak with a peppercorn sauce and Kristen had the leg of duck. She had brown onion soup, which we Americans call 'French Onion Soup'. We finished our meal and then decided to finish our romantic day by heading over to the Eiffel Tower and looking at it at night while drinking wine and eating crepes. We had our wine and crepes below the beautifully-lit tower and headed back home around 11pm. We set our alarms for 4am. We woke up at 4am and I happened to look at our receipt and had figured it out that we had an entire day left in Paris. We had it figured all wrong for when we were leaving. Oh well, it was quite exciting that we had an extra day. We ended up going to the Opera (where the original story for the Phantom of the Opera took place) and where several major classical music composers performed (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.). We had delicious baguettes at this little shop that had desserts galore. The baguettes were delicious! It started raining quite hard, so we ate under the cover of a store's little awning and waited until the rain calmed down a bit. We then walked around a bit and went back to the Louvre and relaxed by the fountains one last time. We ended our trip and went back to our hotel and set our alarms for our "real" departure that was the next morning. We have about 1,500 pictures combined from this trip! I will upload some as soon as I can, when I have free time since it takes quite a while to upload photos.

Paris ici nous venir!

Paris here we come (what title says)! I have finally finished all of my exams and am free to start the summer! Edinburgh has provided a MUCH deserved break from the bad weather, as it has been sun and blue sky for a few days now. Yesterday evening and today all day has been rainy and dark. Yesterday Kristen and I took a trip to North Berwick because it was so nice out. We decided to make it a day at the beach. We picked up blueberries and strawberry wine and sat on the beach for a few hours. Was absolutely beautiful out and I managed to regain some of my AZ tan back! Woohoo! So I won't be too white for when I come back home. We leave for Paris on Thursday at 6am and will then have to take a bus to the city center since Ryanair (cheap airliner) is flying us to a smaller airport away from the city. We will be there for five days and will have PLENTY of pictures between the two of us, so you can expect those to show up in the photo albums. I get back on the 15th and then leave for AZ on the 17th. I will have many flights on the 17th to get back home. First I fly from Edinburgh to Paris, then I fly Paris to Atlanta and finally I will fly Atlanta to Phoenix. Should be a fun travel... Hey, it was the cheapest flight I could find.

I've also been following the oil spill and wow, it has gotten way out of control! I cannot believe the devastation that this spill has been causing to the coastline. I would really like to volunteer and go down to help with the animals being affected by the spill. I saw one picture of a bird and it looked like a mud creature, it was so covered with oil. It was an extremely sad picture to see. Maybe deep sea oil wells are a bad idea? You think? Here's my proposed idea, FIND AN ALTERNATIVE TO OIL! I wish, unfortunately we use oil for so many things that, economically, it would not be wise to eliminate oil. Maybe we shouldn't be drilling deep sea oil wells since we don't have the technology for catastrophes such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico currently going on. I was very disappointed and angered when I heard that BP had put forward 50 million GBP (almost 100 million US dollars) in an ad campaign to improve their image in the eyes of the public. Wow, what good did that do? It only angered the public when they found out. Nice going BP... Good news though, apparently they are finally siphoning 10,000 gallons a day from the spewing hole. That's only half of what is coming out of the broken well. At one point, I heard that an idea for a nuclear warhead to be sent to the oil well was proposed. Apparently the Russians have done this 4/5 times and it has successfully worked. Can you imagine exploding a nuclear warhead? What kind of mad idea is that? Especially so close to the coast... There would be such an environmental impact if that idea was implemented. Unfortunately the Obama Administration has failed HORRIBLY to try and resolve this crisis. When the BP oil rig first exploded and several attempts to seal the oil well went awry, Obama did no more than to publicly criticize BP and did little else. Now, failed attempt after failed attempt, Obama is FINALLY getting on BP and has put forward increased manpower to prevent the oil spill from spreading too fast. In my opinion, the Obama Administration has been far too lax in this crisis and Obama's ability to handle a catastrophic environmental disaster such as this is beyond poor. Maybe this will spark an idea in that little head of Obama's to create a special team to handle disasters such as this. For many of those that feel Bush's response to Katrina was bad, Obama's response to this oil crisis far exceed that of Bush's. The federal government authorizes all offshore drilling and it is the responsibility of the federal government to manage any major catastrophe's involving offshore drilling. This is just one of the many reasons that I hope people realize that Obama is not fit for the job as president and is far more concerned with changing Washington than dealing with the problems at hand. Well, that is the extent of my political ranting. Sorry for the long post, but I am truly upset over this oil spill and it churns my stomach every day that I read that the spill has not been contained. Well, hopefully this crisis will be resolved soon, because there is going to be a LONG duration of cleaning the shorelines and clearing the ocean from this disaster, and BP is going to have to take care of all the expenses. For the manpower being put forth by the Obama Administration, I hope BP is planning on reimbursing the US for our efforts to cleanup their mess.

Anyway, time to call it a day. In the following days, I will be planning the Paris trip (touristy things) and organizing my luggage for when I head back to AZ. Hope everyone had a great weekend and have a grand week! Cheers!

Lectures are OVER!

So yesterday was the last day of lectures. Well, technically it wasn't a lecture but was more of a collaboration between fellow peers in the class. We have been doing these interpretations and discussing the answers to questions in groups. They have all been quite helpful except for the estrus interpretation problem. We were basically handed the professor's research paper and were to answer questions about things we never even discussed in the lectures. Was actually quite annoying. I am off for the next 5 days until next Thursday and Friday when the exams will be. I am still waiting to hear how I did on the written section for the last exam. Hopefully I did okay and will not have to come back in August to re-sit the exam. I passed all of the handling exams (which apparently many people failed some of the sections). I remain confident that I performed well on the last exam though. I will soon find out...

The days have been very nice and just a few days ago, the temperature had increased to an astonishing 75 degrees!!! Yeah, I know, that's absolutely nothing compared to what AZ temperatures will rise to this summer, but hey, this is Scotland and it was 75 degrees with blue sky and sunshine to go with it. I am getting ready to eat dinner with Kristen right now, going to make stir-fry and a mango and sticky rice dessert. I am going to try and post more pictures tonight, so keep an eye out for new pictures. Hope all is well and will be seeing everyone soon!

Summer is here!

So, after all of this cold, rainy weather, the sun has finally decided to come out. It has been so sunny and warm out. I really wish it was like this year-round. A few days ago, I attended a livestock market where they were auctioning off sheep for breeding and for meat. It is a requirement that we attend one livestock market. It was actually interesting how the market/auction works. Of course there is the FAST talking auctioneer and lots of farmers standing around. A couple people from class went and Kristen went as well. Afterwards, we hired a taxi to a town called Causewayhead and ate lunch at this great Italian restaurant that had very good pizza. I finished lunch off with a mango smoothie (DELICIOUS!). We hiked up to the Wallace Monument and took some pictures of us scaling the monument and then made our way back down. We then caught the train to Edinburgh. I'll be posting some pictures from the trip today or tomorrow. Hope everyone is having a great week!

Return From Drumnadrochit (Loch Ness) and Inverness

So we are back from an awesome weekend up in the Northern part of Scotland. We took the train to Inverness at 6.30am and walked around Inverness for a while before catching the bus to Drumnadrochit where our hotel was. Drumnadrochit is where Loch Ness is, well, it is just one of many towns that are along Loch Ness. We unpacked and headed out to hike through the woodlands that were about 1 mile or so away. We were looking all over for Loch Ness (which you think would be extremely easy given the size of the loch), but we walked in circles on this woodland walk for a good two hours. We finally bumped into this lady and she pointed us in the right direction. We had to cross a stream on tip toe and try not to fall stepping on lose stones. We finally reached Loch Ness and it was absolutely beautiful. The view was amazing! I posted the photos on the photo page, so go check them out! We headed back towards town and called it a night. The next day, we headed to Uruqhart Castle, which was about 2 miles away. The view of Loch Ness was amazing the entire walk to the castle. We reached the castle and ate a quick lunch and went down to the castle. The castle was beautiful and so old. It is in ruins, but there were still some levels of the castle that we were able to take the spiral staircase up to. We took hundreds of photos and had to head back towards town to catch the 1.30pm bus back to Inverness. We made it back to Inverness and walked around a bit before our train arrived. Finally, after a 4 hour train ride, we made it back to Edinburgh. Oh, and FINALLY I am posting pictures, sorry for the delay everyone! Hope everyone is doing well and will talk soon!

Oh, and FYI, we booked our plane tickets to Paris and will be leaving on 10th June and will be in Paris for 5 days! Can't wait! Hopefully there won't be an ash cloud from the Iceland volcano...

Passed Handling Examinations!

So I just checked online what my results were for the animal handling exams. There were 3 types of marks used for the handling exams, (2) = Good Pass, (1) = Pass, (0) = Fail (obviously). I received a 2 in the cattle handling section, 1 in the exotics, 1 in the equine, 1 in sheep and a 1 in dog/cat. I was so happy that I received a pass in the exotics section since everyone was hearing rumors that 2/3 of the class had failed the exotics handling exam. Was strange that I did not receive a 2 in horses or sheep since I thought I did extremely well during the exam. The only thing I got wrong with sheep was aging by looking at teeth, but he had me age a second one and I got that correct. Dog/cat handling, I only received a 1 because I identified the cat breed wrong and probably did not give the proper sex of the cat (since we were looking from a distance). I mean, come on, sex a cat from 3 feet? It's difficult, especially when the cat is not showing its hind end the entire time. Maybe I should just work with cattle since I received a 2 mark on that (on second thoughts, I'll stick with dogs/cats). Anyway, glad that I passed them and now waiting to hear about the written exam. Booked my plane tickets and will be arriving on June 17th to AZ. I will then be taking a flight to Washington on the 19th June and won't be back until the 26th June. My return flight to Edinburgh will not be until September 9th and that may change, I may extend my vacation. I will also be going to Ottawa, Canada to visit my fantabulous girlfriend Kristen for a week or two! Can't wait for that! Will also be nice to be back home and work in surgery again!!! I am severely deprived of surgery-land. Well, I must get going so that I can work on notes and get to bed for tomorrow. Talk to everyone soon!

Royal Dick Veterinary School on TV!

Hi all! Just wanted to let you all know that the vet school here was on TV for a five-part miniseries for a behind-the-scenes look at the vet school. The link is below if you want to watch. Hope everyone is doing well! Will be leaving for Inverness on Saturday morning so will have lots of pictures for you.

http://player.stv.tv/programmes/vet-school/

Heading to Loch Ness...

Yep, it's true, I will be heading to Loch Ness with Kristen in a couple of weeks to look for Nessie. Not sure if we'll be able to find her but will definitely take some pictures if we spot her. We are taking a train to Inverness and then heading down to a town called Drumnadrochit. We will be hiking all around Loch Ness that weekend. I'm quite excited about the trip! I'm also in the midst of trying to buy a plane ticket back home. I'm basically going to fly into Phoenix and then the next day, take a flight to Portland, OR so I can see my niece's first birthday. Will be there for about a week and will then head back to Phoenix where I will be for the remainder of the summer. I have EMS that I must complete but will be able to do all of my required weeks in town. I just received confirmation that I will be able to complete 1 week at Out West Stallion Station and will be calling Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue to try and set up my 1 week there. This week has been quite lax, which is good after so much studying that I endured for the last examination. I am looking forward to being back at the clinic during the summer working in surgery (back where I belong)! I have been severely deprived of surgery time and must get back in ASAP!

I finished my portfolio today. The portfolio that we must turn in is required every year. I have to include all of my EMS forms, certificates of attendance, in-course assessments, feedback forms, a CV, etc. I finished my CV last night and just used a template I had for when I made one back in AZ. It's great they have you work on a CV and help you work on developing a good CV by the end of your 4th year. I have to get together with my Director of Studies on Monday, which we have off. I get it signed and approved and then turn it in to be graded. I have class tomorrow and continue the case studies that we have started. This next portion of the course is aimed at exposing us to a variety of clinical cases. It is supposed to help us bring everything from the Animal Body course together and be able to think through a clinical diagnosis. I think it is very helpful. The exam for this section is only worth 10% and we are given the essay questions beforehand, so I will probably work on them this weekend. Well, hope everyone is doing well and can't wait to see you all when I come back!

Days 2 and 3 of Animal Handling are OVER!!!

So, it is finally over, all of my animal handling exams. Yesterday I had sheep and cattle. We got to the sheep shed and I had an 11.10am - 11.20am exam time. I waited around and did some last minute studying, like remembering estrus cycles of sheep and gestation periods, etc. The lambing stuff was easy since I had just spent 3 weeks lambing. I was called in and I had the shepard Archie, examine me. He started out by asking me to describe what breed the sheep were (Scottish Mules, Blackface crossed with a Bluefaced Leicester). I went a little extra by describing why the two are crossed. He then asked me to restrain one and age it. These sheep were extremely easy to catch and just stood there while I caught them. I aged the first one wrong thinking that it was an older ewe because the teeth were small, thin and spaced apart. In being nervous, I forgot to compare body size against age as well. Apparently all the teeth were milk teeth and the ewe was just over a year. He had me age another one and I got that correct since there were 2 sets of adult incisors. He then had me catch a lamb and give the sex of the lamb. He then had me discuss ear tagging requirements, what is important in the first 24 hours of lambing time, hygiene at lambing time, problems at lambing time with the ewes, etc. At the end, I had to identify types of feeds, which I aced, and then identify sheep breeds which I did okay on. Afterwards, we went back to the university cafeteria and ate lunch and had to be back at the sheep shed to catch the bus for 12.30pm.

The bus came and took us to Langhill Farm, where I had a 2.40pm exam time. I changed into my waterproofs and made my way to the teaching shed where the exams were being held. Lawrence, the farmer, came out and got me. The person that was examining me was Wilson. I was extremely happy because I had done a week of dairy with him last July and he was at the revision session last Friday, so he had seen that I could do everything at the revision session already. The exam was very straight forward. I had to show how to put in a mouth gag, discuss stomach tubing, discuss lactation information, identify breeds and then I was done. I washed off and took the bus home and was so tired that I didn't even bother studying for dog/cat. I felt that since I have been working with them for almost 6 years, that I should be fine.

I woke up today around 7.30am and caught the 8.40am bus to the dog/cat shelter. There were 5 of us that met at the bus. We got to the shelter and I still had a couple of hours, so I decided to sit by the beach. It was extremely nice out, but a little windy. We all went into the waiting room and I waited until it was time for me to go in. I studied some cat breeds/colors since I wasn't too great with that and went over a couple dog breeds that I wasn't sure of (Afghan, Bedlington Terrier). I was called out and I made my way to my examiner. She started out by pulling out a pile of dog pictures and asked me to identify about 10-12 of the breeds. I named all but one, and I couldn't remember for the life of me. I said sheepdog. She then told me to give the full correct name. I was quiet for a second and then said English Sheepdog and left it at that. I forgot the "OLD" but was close enough. Old English Sheepdog, very hairy dogs!

I finished with the identification and we then went into the dog pens. The examiner gave me a lead rope and told me to get this springer spaniel out of the cage. Of course, I get an extremely hyper dog for my handling exam... I took the dog out and brought it into the exam room. I had to describe the dog and the coat color, pick it up and put it on the table, give the sex of the dog, administer a pill down the throat, apply muzzle tape, put into lateral recumbency, put dog back on ground and back into the kennel. I then followed the examiner outside and had to describe two cats that were outside. I got one, but the second one was a bit tricky, so not sure how I did on that. I'm confident I did good on the handling aspect and the dog breed identification, but the cats not so sure on. I was quite happy afterwards. I am now finished with the handling exams and now have to study for the exam on Friday, the big written exam. Hopefully it won't be too difficult. Well, hope everyone is doing great and I shall talk to you all soon!

Day 1 of handling exams OVER!

So, one day down, 3 to go! Today was our first set of handling exams. I had Exotics and Equine today and I was really worried about the exotics portion of the handling exam. Each exam was only 10 minutes long, which isn't bad at all. We took the noon bus out to the veterinary school and waited a couple of hours until it was my turn for the exotics. Every person had a separate time and there were two that went in at a time at two different stations. I went in and was placed at station A, the reptile station. The lady took me into the reptile area and asked me what kind of snake was in the the vivarium. I told her a corn snake (which was correct), she then preceded to ask me where it was from. I guessed and said a desert snake, she said no and gave me another chance. I said, India? Nope, somewhere in the US. Horrible! I mean, come on! I felt like I was back in Herpetology trying to figure out where a species of a snake is from. She asked me how I would approach the snake and I told her, and had to describe to her what I was doing as I was picking up the snake. I got the snake out and we brought it out to the table, where she asked me more questions about the snake. She asked me about skin shedding, behavior and when to know when the snake is agitated, housing requirements for the snake, etc. She then put two bags of food in front of me and asked me what they were. I started out by saying the one on the left is a bird feed and she looked at me puzzled. I took a second look and saw that there were no seeds in the mix. I then said it was rodent mix (which was correct) and then she asked me what the food was on the right. This was a tricky one and I honestly had no idea. The food looked like thin, elongated pellets that were dark brown in color. The only thing that came to mind was Chinchilla Pellets. So that's what I told her. She said I was correct and then asked how I knew they were chinchilla pellets. Ok, like I'm going to know that? Apparently they are elongated so that the chinchilla has an easier time of grasping the food. I put the snake back and washed my hands and was finished. Hopefully I passed that exam, seemed like I did okay with it. Next was horses, which I have to say was SOOOOO easy! It was nice that they were using the teaching mares. I barely had to do anything when it came to lifting the mare's leg, she did it for me. I had to properly put on a head collar, walk with the horse, trot with the horse, tie the horse up, lift legs, lead it back into the stable, answer some questions about the condition of the stable and finally answer a question about which rug I would use on a horse if putting it outside. Now, this one was extremely easy. There were two choices, there was one rug, which was extremely muddy and dirty all over and there was a second rug, which was perfectly clean. Now, which one did I pick? Of course I picked the clean one...Just kidding, the one on the left obviously was an outdoor rug. So, finished with those two and now I have sheep and cattle tomorrow. Hopefully sheep won't be too bad and cattle won't be either. Well, back to studying! Talk to you all later!

Third Update From North Yorkshire...

April 12th:
So today was quite exciting. I'll just jump straight to the interesting part because the beginning of the day was quite uneventful. At around 12.20am, Tessie the Texel/Border Leicester cross was going into labor. Ellie told me about Tessie when I first got here and said that Tessie was all m;uscle because of the Texel in her. Ellie had said that I may have to rugby tackle Tessie when she delivers her lamb(s) because she will run the entire time. Well, I didn't have to do that, but she was still not a good ewe to deal with. I went out and saw that the water bag had come out and was hanging there. I made sure there was no head inside the bag, otherwise I would of had to have broken the bag. I went in for 15 minutes and we then saw half of a lamb sticking out of Tessie on the sheep camera in the caravan! I quickly ran out just in time to see that Tessie was bashing the lamb's head against the hay rack in an attempt to try and get the lamb out herself! I jumped over the railing and quickly pulled the lamb out the rest of the way. Once the lamb was out, Tessie bonded very well. Talk about a rude awakening for the lamb. "Welcome to the world, watch your head on the way out!".

April 13th:
No more ewes lambed during the night. We woke up around 9am. I looked out my window and saw that there was a very thick fog hanging about. It was gone within a couple of hours. Was very cold and wet today. Ellie and I mostly stayed in and worked on my EMS reports that I have to do along with this placement. Around 4pm, we noticed that there was a ewe going into labor. We looked and saw that the water bag had broken and there was a foot and nose sticking out. I gave it 20 minutes of watching the ewe push and strain with no indications that the lamb would be coming out anytime soon. I was by myself because Ellie was feeding. I was worried that the ewe would stand up as I put my hand in so I was partially sitting on her so she couldn't get up. As soon as I inserted my hand, she really started pushing and at that point I knew she wouldn't be getting up anytime soon. I worked the lamb out and it was very tight. The head was trapped so I had to really work around the head and push down on it to get it out. I finally managed to pull the lamb out. It was a big girl and the ewe bonded with her very well.

April 14th:
Today, Ellie left around 8am and left me to take care of everything for about 8 hours. She went up to Berwick, Scotland to pick up about 19 replacement ewes that she lent to this farmer. I fed everyone, which took forever by myself. I worked on some notes for my exam and Ellie showed up around 6pm. I noticed that one of the ewes was on the ground and beginning to push. I saw no water bag but it was quite wet on the wool around the vulva, so the bag must have broken. About 5 minutes later I saw the tip of a foot. I waited about 15 minutes and decided to go in to assist. Peter, Ellie's friend was here. He had driven up to Berwick with Ellie to help with the sheep. He went in to hold the ewe that was in labor down. I went to go wash my hands and when I got back in the shed, Peter had his dirty hands in and was feeling for the lamb. This poor ewe! Peter is quite a big man and each finger is like a bratwurst sausage! PLUS, he hadn't washed his hands! So he took his hand out and I put a lot of lubricant around my hand. I went in and felt both front legs and made sure that they weren't back legs. I found the head and attempted to work out the lamb. It was such a tight fit and it seemed like it was taking forever! The lamb started moving inside as well and every time I would go in and grab a leg, the lamb would pull it back. I finally pulled hard enough and managed to get both front legs out but the head was still inside. Peter pushed down up by the anus where the head was and we managed to get the lamb out finally. I stuck some straw up the lambs nose to cause a sneeze reflex so that it would start breathing and massaged its chest a bit. It was quite a big lamb as well. Afterwards, we let mum bond with her new lamb and we went out to give dewormer to all the ewes Ellie had just picked up. Peter left and we fed all the animals. Jerome was supposed to relieve us but he never called and was not answering his phone. Ellie and I decided that around 7pm, we would go get Chinese takeaway and come back to the caravan. We got back, ate dinner, watched the tele (guess what we watched? ...CSI!!!). We then went to bed.

April 15th:
Today was very uneventful. Fed the animals in the morning, sat in the caravan all day and watched movies and worked on studying a bit.

April 16th:
Today a young girl (14 or 15) came to the farm to get some experience before she applies to vet school. She was extremely quiet and it was difficult to get her to talk. I showed her around a bit and educated her about what to do around lambing time. We had nothing until about 3pm when one of the ewes began to bleat quite loudly. I knew that she was going to pass a lamb within the hour. She kept lying down, pushing and then getting back up. She did this for about 20 minutes and the lamb's leg kept going in and out with no indications that she was going to pass the lamb on her own since she was straining so hard. I got both legs out but wasn't able to get the head out. I pushed one of the legs back in to make more room and managed to get the head out and then grabbed the other leg. I pulled the lamb out and it was quite large. We took care of the lamb and Jerome came to relieve us later. We went to Ellie's, where I had a great shower! We then got Chinese takeaway that was awesome! We headed back to the farm and one of the ewes had lambed while we were away. The ewe that had lambed was a very sweet ewe that was named Raquelle. She had two lambs that were smaller than what we had been seeing. We tried feeding them and one wasn't quite sure what to do with her tongue. It just flopped out to the side. We finally managed to get a bit of colostrum down the lamb and called it a night. I went out to the shed one last time and told all the ewes that there is to be no lambing until after 9am tomorrow morning, at least that was my wish.

April 17th:
My wish of no ewes waking me up early did not come true...At 4.45am, a ewe was pushing and I could heaer it from my window that I had cracked open because Ellie had the heater on so high. I went out and had no idea how long she had been pushing and two legs were out. It looked like she was straining quite hard so I decided to assist her. I managed to get the lamb out and it was ok. I fed it some colostrum and went back for a quick half hour nap and got up around 7.30am and got ready. Kristen's train was arriving at Darlington station for 10am. We went to Ellie's house before we went to the station so I could take a shower, and oh did it feel good to take a shower! I had a cup of tea before we left and went to go grab my jacket. However, in the rush of things, back at the caravan before leaving for Ellie's, I forgot to grab my jacket. Ellie was so kind as to let me borrow a fleece, a woman's fleece... It was dark blue and fit somewhat. If it was going to be cold in Whitby, I was going to need something. We got to Darlington at 10.15am and when we pulled up, all I could say was wow! I immediately saw Kristen and she was so gorgeous! We got her in the car and had to hurry to make the 10.38am train in Middlesburgh. Ellie dropped us off at what she thought was the rail entrance, but it wasn't. Kristen and I managed to miss the train but decided to hang out in Middlesburgh until the next train came, which was at 2.15pm. Middlesburgh was nice, but not a huge amount of stuff to do other than shopping. We got on the train to Whitby and wow was it beautiful! The scenery was great with a lot of tiny farms and fields full of ewes and new lambs. We arrived in Whitby and it was absolutely beautiful outside with the sun out and clear skies. The town was so busy but was absolutely stunning! We immediately fell in love with the town. There is a port that runs through town and there were loads of boat tours that you could take. We wanted to find accommodation as soon as we could, however, because there were so many tourists because of it being Military weekend, a lot of places had no vacancies. I had my iphone out and was calling hotel after hotel. Every person I spoke with had the same answer, "sorry, we are booked for the night." I walked into this pub/inn while Kristen waited outside. No vacancies either but the lady there pointed me towards some bed and breakfasts that would have accommodation available. As we walked along the port, the smell of fresh fish was pungent in the air. We walked by a couple of fresh fish bars and Kristen happened to notice a sign in the window of a pub called "BUCK INN" that was flashing the word, "vacancies". I thought that maybe they had forgotten to light up the "no" before the word. We walked in and it was a bar with 3 rooms upstairs. There was one room left so we took it and dropped all of our stuff off in the room. The room was very nice and cozy. We headed out to check out the town. We decided to go to the end of the pier towards the lighthouse. When we reached the pier, all I can say is wow!!! Words could not describe what I saw and pictures will surely not do justice as to how beautiful it was. There were huge cliffs lining the coast, a massive beach following the coast, a view of an 800 year old abbey on a cliff overlooking the town and a beautiful view of the ocean. We took loads of pictures and went up the lighthouse. It cost 1.20 per person to go up, but was worth it. The spiral staircase was so old and once at the top, the view was amazing! Don't worry because between her and I, we have loads of pictures that I will be uploading. We were hungry afterwards so we headed to the world famous "Magpie Fish and Chips". It was sooooo good. Was not greasy like most fish and chip shops. The cod was very good, almost melted in our mouths. We sat down overlooking the pier on a little bench and it was so nice. We walked around the town to check out all the shops, and the streets were so busy! The streets that that shops were on were very narrow too and had old cobblestone covering the streets. We had decided to go to Whitby Abbey and see the whalebone arch on Sunday and explore the town instead. We explored more and went back to our inn we were staying at. We changed and got ready to go out for drinks. We walked around for a while before finding a pub. We came across this weird shop that had these little bear figures. It was a collection called "Bad Bear", and the things they were doing were weird. There was one that had been bitten by a shark and was dressed in surfer gear holding a surf board. However, coming out of the bite wound were it's intestines. Very strange I tell ya! There were others, but I definitely will not go into detail regarding those. We finally came across a small pub called the "Golden Lion". It was very small inside but was a nice old pub. There were a bunch of French guys in the other room chanting "aluvetta....", not sure if I spelled it correctly. We had a drink and took pictures of our nerdy chics. Before Kristen left for home for Easter, she gave me an Easter bag full of things. She had put in two nerdy chics that were wearing glasses and a yellow ribbon each. We decided that from now on, wherever we go for trips, we are to bring the chics and take pictures of them together. Kind of like the travelocity gnome, but better...MUCH better! We went to another pub and called it a night.

April 18th:
We woke up around 7.30am to get the day started early since Ellie was coming at 3pm to pick us up. We decided to grab a bite to eat. We each had a full English breakfast, which did a great job at satisfying our bellies. Afterwards, we headed back to the inn to see what time checkout was. The lady let us keep our bags in our room until 3pm since no one was there during the day. We headed towards the hill that had the whalebone arch. The lower whale jawbones were from Anchorage, Alaska. While we were up on the hill, we noticed that there was a military show going on. There were some tents with a bunch of war memorabilia and the men were dressed in uniform. There was even an American tent at the very end! Afterwards, we walked to the abbey where we ascended 200 steps to reach it. There was a graveyard where Bram Stoker's story of Dracula was written. There is such an amazing history here it's amazing! We walked around the abbey a bit and took LOADS of pictures! We walked to the graveyard and took some pictures. The view of the eastern coastline was absolutely gorgeous. It was a very picturesque view and I could hardly believe my eyes at how beautiful it was. We descended the steps and headed back into town where we decided to grab lunch at a cafe. We sat upstairs where we had a view of the harbor and the abbey on the hill in the distance. While eating, Ellie had called and said she could not pick us up because a ewe started lambing. She was supposed to pick us up because no trains run out of Whitby on a Sunday. Kristen and I had to rush to the bus station. We managed to get to a bus right as it was leaving. We met Ellie in Guisborough where she picked us up. Ted and Archie (Ellie's dogs) were also in the truck with us along with Ted's littermate Bruno. They really liked Kristen and huddled up next to her in the front seat. I'll have to admit, I was a little jealous of those dogs. Here I was sitting in the back seat alone and Ted and Bruno were hanging out with Kristen in the front seat. That's ok though, Archie hung out with me in the back seat. We headed back to the farm. I showed Kristen around and she helped me feed all the ewes. Ellie warmed up some milk and I showed Kristen how to bottle-feed a lamb. She fed the lamb that we suspect has a selenium deficiency, which causes White Muscle Disease. Basically, the lamb is too weak to get up right now. He should get better after a couple administrations of seleium. Kristen managed to get 100mls of milk down the lamb, which was great! Better than what I had gotten down him the first time. Jeoff was there helping Ellie and he left the gate that divided the ewes from the tups. We had to go and get the four ewes straight away. Afterwards, we headed out for a very quick dinner at this really good Chinese restaurant. We literally had like 15 minutes for Kristen to eat. Ellie had the lady that worked there hire a taxi for Kristen. I helped her out to the taxi and Ellie and I finished dinner. We went back to the farm and there had been no lambs. We called it a night and headed off to bed.

April 19th:
Today, there was no action at the farm. I fed the animals and watched some tele. We had dinner later on and went to bed early. The ewes were nice and did not lamb at all through the night.

April 20th:
Well, today is my last day. We woke up around 9am and fed all the sheep. My train was at 12.46pm (so I thought). We went to Ellie's daughter's house for a cup of tea. Her daughter has this enormous estate! The front drive was huge but the backyard was HUGE!!!!!! It even had it's own forest with thickets of trees all over! There was a little pagoda in the middle of a small pond that was lovely. I walked around with the dogs. After I walked around a bit, we left and headed back so I could get ready. Ellie's friend Heather and her husband picked me up and drove me to Darlington station. I got there and had missed the train. I had thought originally that the train was at 12.46pm when in reality, it was at 12.26pm. Oh well, I had to purchase another ticket and wait another half hour before the next train arrived. I got home to Edinburgh and was so relieved to be back in my flat. I went grocery shopping and had Kristen over for dinner.

PICTURES: So, I am now going to work on uploading photos for you all. Check the link at the top on the right.