North Berwick Engagement April 6th, 2012

So, I am now officially engaged to Kristen as of yesterday!!!!!! VERY EXCITED!!!!!! As most of you knew, I had planned on proposing to Kristen for a while, buying the engagement ring back in October of 2011. I called Shane Co from Edinburgh using Magicjack and made the purchase over the phone. I had originally picked out a ring that Kristen really liked. The engagement ring had a slot in it so that the wedding band that came with it would fit right in. After a couple of months of making the payments on the ring, we happened to be looking at some more rings, as I was trying to distract Kristen from suspecting anything about me purchasing a ring. I thought I would keep on showing her rings as my strategy...and it worked! So, there I was talking to Kristen on Skype as usual and I showed her this ring from Shane Co. We both really liked it and I sent her a picture of the ring I had already begun paying on and the new one that she really liked. I told her to tell me which out of the two she liked the most...well, guess which one she liked? Yep, the one that I had not started paying on. So, I had to call Shane Co back and change the ring, which was very easy and took all of 5 minutes to do. I arrived in Arizona for Christmas and waited for the ring to arrive. I received an email with the shipping confirmation and noticed that on the order, only the diamond was being described as being sent. There was no mention of a setting. So I called Shane Co back and asked if they had actually set the diamond in the setting and not JUST the diamond. Guess what they did? Yep, they were sending me the diamond that had not yet been set in the setting. So they had to cancel the order and set the diamond in the setting then resend it. I finally received a delivery card at my mom's house for the ring. I had to go down to Fed Ex to pick up the ring. Let me tell you, the ring was absolutely gorgeous and more sparkly than it was in the photo! I was so glad I changed the order when I did. So, after showing everyone in Arizona the ring, I had to fly back to Edinburgh and hold on to it for about 4 months until Kristen was to arrive. I planned on proposing to her in North Berwick, as it was the site of our very first picnic on the beach there together. On our second picnic there, we had purchased a wine called "Caire no Mohr" Strawberry wine. Well, I happened to be at the farmer's market below Edinburgh castle in Castle Terrace (where the farmer's market is every Saturday) and came across the "Caire no Mohr" wine stand. The happened to be selling the bubbly version of the strawberry wine!!!! I thought to myself that it would be absolutely perfect for the engagement day on the beach! So, I bought the bubbly wine and found a good hiding spot for it in my room so Kristen wouldn't see it when she arrived. I then booked a room at a bed and breakfast in North Berwick called "Seaholm Bed and Breakfast". I spoke with Lorena over the phone and told her that I would be coming by that week to drop off rose pedals and the strawberry wine. I told her that I wanted the rose pedals spread out on the bed and the floor and she was quite happy to oblige to my requests. She was a very nice lady and I would recommend that anyone ever going to North Berwick book a room at this place. After talking to her and booking the room, the next step of the plan was to visit North Berwick to drop off the wine and rose petals and find the perfect proposal location on the beach. Ideally, I wanted a view of Bass Rock and the sea. I went to North Berwick with a buddy of mine and found the perfect spot on the beach. It was difficult to see that day because of the fog and the tide was in, however, I knew where I wanted to propose to Kristen. We dropped off the goods at Seaholm and headed back to Edinburgh. April 6th rolls around and it is day 2 of Kristen being in Edinburgh. We wake up late and we eventually get out of the flat around 3pm and catch the train to North Berwick and get there just before high tide. Was a VERY close call since the tide comes in around 5pm or so! I had the ring in my jacket pocket as we were walking down a path to the beach. I had also secretly stashed special wine glasses and overnight stuff. Once we were at the spot on the beach, I took a few photos of us to make it seem as if we were just taking pictures and having a good time. I was about to ask her and then people showed up! Bah! I wanted it to be just the two of us and no one else! So we waited for the people to leave, which was luckily about 10 min or so. Once they left, I told Kristen that I loved her so much and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Then I got down on one knee in the wet sand with a view of Bass Rock in the background and proposed to her. At first, all I got from her was, "oh my god! oh my god! Dan! Oh my god! Really?! What?!!!! Oh my god Dan!", to which my reply was, "and your answer is???" and she said "Yes of course!". So, after celebrating with wine and jumping off a giant boulder because we were so excited, I told her I had booked a place to stay the night in North Berwick. We went to the place and Lorena had set up the room with the rose petals and champagne in a bucket of ice. It was PERFECT! I couldn't have asked for a more perfect day/night. We had dinner at The Grange and had burgers that were amazing! After dinner, we called it a night. On Saturday, we walked around North Berwick and took lots of photos of us. We went home late afternoon and continued to celebrate our engagement to one another. What an amazing break and I am so glad that everything went as planned!

Lectures over forever, one exam down and 5 more to go...

Lectures have finally ended with the last two lectures covering clinical cases of exotic animals. We had our Veterinary Public Health exam on Friday and it consisted of a pathological spot component in which we had to look at images on a projector screen and answer the questions that went with each picture. I have never been so pressed for time on an exam before! All of the questions were fair and I remembered all of them from lectures (say for two or three questions that stumped me). We had 6 minutes to answer questions that went with 10 photos. Each photo, on average, had around 7 questions that required a lot of writing for the most part. Once we finished the first part of the exam, I went to the main library and studied for 2.5 hours before part 2 of the exam. At 2.30pm we had the written component of the exam that consisted of 10 short answer questions and we had 1.5 hours to complete the exam. I was writing non-stop for this examination as well and came to finish the exam 10 minutes before the timer ended. All questions on the written part were quite fair as well. I will find out in about a month what I received for a mark.

Over the next 3.5 weeks I will be preparing for the written examination on equine and exotics medicine and prepare for the spot examination on the clinical examination of the cow and sheep. It has been in the 70's here in Edinburgh over the last two days, which is the warmest I've been in this time of year! It was so nice out yesterday that I went for a very long walk to the park. Apparently this is mating season for frogs...I came across 6-7 frog pairs in the park with a couple of male frogs fighting for the female. Was funny to watch. I did manage to take some photos so I will post those as soon as possible. Hope all is well with everyone and I am looking forward to seeing you all at the end of May!

Only two more days and I am done with lectures FOREVER!

Yes, you did read that right. We now only have two more days of lectures remaining for the remainder of the BVM&S program. That's not to say I won't have lectures here and there from guest speakers. As far as the core course material goes, I am completely done with the lectures as of next Tuesday. It's taken how long for me to reach this point in my life? Seems like I have been in school forever and I am very excited that I will be finished with didactic learning and moving on to practical education. This will be a great change and I will finally get to perform surgeries and obtain some hands on experience. We have our Veterinary Public Health exam next Friday that will consist of a spot exam, which is going to be 10 pictures of diseased meat/carcasses along with multiple questions for each picture. We have 6 minutes to answer each of the 10 pictures/questions and later on that day we have to head into town and take the written portion of the exam that will consist of 10 short answer questions that we will have 1 1/2 hours to complete. I have been studying for the past 4 weeks for this exam to try and get a head start so I wouldn't have to rush at the last minute and I feel quite confident with what I know. It is nice to have such a big head start on studying because I can relax a little and not panic about the material that I haven't studied yet. Wish me luck!

Arthur's Seat Run

So yesterday, I decided that it was so nice out that I would take a run out to Arthur's Seat. There is an old building that I have always seen from a distance but have never actually walked out to go see. I decided that yesterday was the day to do just that. I ran from the flat to Arthur's Seat and through the valley between Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags. The old building was interesting to see and it overlooked a small lake. This small lake had hundreds of birds swimming in the water with about 80% of them being swans. It was really neat to see! I ran down to this lake and around it and took several pictures of the swans that were being fed by some man who had a bag of bread crumbs. I would also like to note that he was feeding these swans directly in front of a sign that specifically said "Do not feed the birds." I guess he didn't "see" the sign...

I have started studying for the Veterinary Public Health examination that is coming up in 4 weeks' time and the material is not too difficult to understand. Basically, it's determining whether or not to locally reject meat or totally reject meat based on the the pathology that the meat has. We have practical sessions each week where we have hands on learning with real examples from abattoirs. On Friday, I pulled my very first rabbit maxillary incisor. I also gave an intraosseous injection to the rabbit, flushed the nasolacrimal duct (which is quite difficult in a rabbit as their duct is TINY!) and performed a spay. I also forgot to mention to you that these procedures were performed on deceased rabbits. Was great experience though. We have our avian practical tomorrow where we learn about air sac intubation, ET intubation, blood sampling techniques, surgical procedures, etc. So that should be a lot of fun.

Well, that was the update since my last post. Nothing exciting has happened since then. I did go to a birthday party this weekend that was a lot of fun and I also went to the farmer's market last weekend and had a fresh pulled pork sandwich that was delicious! I will try and post the photos from yesterday's run soon. Hope all is well! Talk to you all soon!

Ben Nevis!

So a couple weekends back I decided to attempt climbing Ben Nevis (tallest mountain in Britain) with a buddy of mine. The elevation is around 4400ft. The day that we decided to go the forecast was predicted to be 60-70mph winds with whiteout conditions in the early morning and clearing up in the late morning. We left Edinburgh around 5am and headed up to Fort William (where Ben Nevis is located). Once there, we prepped ourselves for the climb. I basically wore my ski clothes and had also brought my goggles as I wasn't sure if it was going to be snowing or not, and with the wind the way it was predicted I decided to bring my goggles. We began the ascent with no problems (my knees were doing great this time around). At around 400 meters up we ran into the typical Scottish rain, which was no good if the temperature was going to drop at the top. Not a good combination of being wet and then walking into freezing temperatures. The rain stopped at about 600 meters up and it started turning into ice/snow/slush coming down. The trail was maintained quite well and we walked by several groups of people. As we increased in altitude, breathing became more and more difficult and the trail began to collect snow. Further on, we encountered snow covered trail and ice as well. At about 900 meters up, the trail was all snow and the wind really began to kick in. I would say at this point the wind was about 45-50mph. We kept on pushing and eventually the trail disappeared and we decided to head up and make our own trail and follow the compass. As we did, the conditions progressively deteriorated and the white out conditions began. I would say that we were about 1100 meters up and the wind was about 60-65mph now. I was getting blown over and losing my balance constantly. The wind hurt my face as it was blowing snow so hard that it felt like a sand blaster was abrading my face. We finally reached a cairn that was about 4 feet tall. For those of you who don't know what a cairn is, it is a pile of rocks used to mark a trail. We knew we were in the right spot for the trail at that point. However, the wind was persistent and the visibility seemed to be getting worse so we made the decision to turn around.

We were unable to pick up our tracks from the original route so we had to head west and intersect our trail somehow. The entire descent we were battered with strong winds and had to maneuver around icy rocks and loose snow. There was enough snow, however, that we were able to slide down on our rear ends. The snow slopes were quite long as well. I would say that on average, we would slide down about 50 yards at a time! Which definitely makes descending easier and much more fun! We reached a point where we had to walk alongside a waterfall (or on top of it at some points where it was partially frozen). At one point, I was sliding down alongside the waterfall and when I went to push my hand up, it sunk down through the snow right into the small frigid stream below. We finally made it down to the main trail and I was so happy to have reached firm ground that wasn't icy or rocky! After an hour of descending via the main trail we arrived at the car park and were soaking wet! We changed and went into the pub that was near the car park. After we enjoyed a nice pint of lager we headed back to Edinburgh. That is our story and here are the photos of the climb.

Ben Nevis, Scotland - February 2012

Hemsedal, Norway Photos

Ok, so here are the photos from Hemsedal, Norway. Enjoy!!

Hemsedal, Norway 2012

Back from Norway!

After 5 days in Norway I am back hard at work for semester 2. Norway was absolutely amazing and was better the second time! There were 8 of us that caught a flight over to Oslo Torp and then took a bus to the main city center of Oslo that was about 2 hours away. Once in the city center, we found our hostel that we booked and went to sleep. In the morning we walked around the city center in search of a car rental agency. We managed to find a place to rent 2 cars for 3 days. After the cars were settled we decided to explore a bit of Oslo before we began our journey to Hemsedal (the ski resort). We went to the city hall of Oslo, the boat docks, this park called Frogner Park that had dozens of statues of naked people and babies and then through some random neighborhoods that were very pretty. We even walked passed the Greek Embassy that looked like a regular home. I guess that's all that they could afford for their embassy! After we saw a bit of Oslo we began our road trip to Hemsedal. After about 2 hours of going in circles around the city center of Oslo, we finally made it out to the main freeway. The GPS system kept telling us to take the wrong exit and at one point we entered this extremely long tunnel and lost satellite connection so we were lost in the tunnel for about 20 minutes. After a rough 6 hour journey to Hemsedal, we had finally made it to the ski resort around 11pm. The directions to find our loft were horrible as we spent another 1.5 hours trying to find our place. We had to go through a security gate and then drive up the winding roads of the mountain pass. The loft was very nice and it was ski on ski off. The first day was ok for snow but there hadn't been any new snow for a while. The runs were nice but groomed and a bit on the icy side unfortunately. We made the best of it though and were able to get quite a bit of runs in. Over night, a snow storm moved in and dumped a lot of new snow for us on the second day and it snowed the entire day so that there was fresh powder EVERYWHERE! It was so wonderful to have a lot of new snow to ski in. We were on the slopes for a good portion of the morning and at noon we went in for lunch to the ski lodge. Afterwards, we were out on the slopes until 3.30pm and then went back to the ski lodge where there was a live Norwegian band singing nothing but American songs such as Sweet Home Alabama! After the lodge we went back to the loft and packed our things so that we would be ready to head out in the morning. Around 2am we all decided to head to bed. I got into bed and suddenly there was this pounding noise on the neighbor's door. It went away after a couple of minutes and about 10 minutes later the pounding was on our bedroom window and scared me half to death! Jon and I jumped up and went to the front door to see what the commotion was all about and it was this twenty something year old Norwegian guy. He claimed that he had no key to his place and all of his friends were back in town still. He had apparently been sleeping on the back patio of their loft for 30 min in the freezing cold. We let him in and Jon and I sat at the kitchen table with him and phoned the front lobby back in town to have someone come up to let him into his place. After about 15 minutes of talking to this drunk Norwegian guy that had horrible English, the guy from the lobby arrived and took him off of our hands. We finally went to sleep around 2.40am. The next morning we packed our things and headed out of Hemsedal for our 6pm flight.

I am now back in Edinburgh and ready for the week to end. Have had a busy week of practicals and long days and I am for sure ready for the weekend to arrive. I will eventually get the Norway photos up for everyone to see (probably by tomorrow). Hope everyone is doing well. Miss you all! Will post again soon! Oh! I also passed the farm animal integrated clinical exam and found out a couple of days ago. Woohoo! Now we have to take the equine and exotics exam after Easter break. Can't wait for final year to get here so that I can finish and finally start working!