Let's go away for a while, you and I, to a far and distant land

So it's been a while since I've written... as you can probably guess, I'm WAY busy with classes now.  Although, by now, I'm kind of getting an idea of what classes I need to freak out about and what classes I can relax with...but only a little bit.  This is the beginning of the rest of my life, after all.


A lot has happened since I last wrote.  I think I'll start with the island tour.


Our driver, Sackville, took us on a tour of the island.  Tours are his specialty, so he was awesome at it.  We got to stop at Brimstone Hill, which was an English fortress that they used in wars against the French, who landed on St. Kitts not long after the British, as well as other people.  It was pretty awesome.  I don't have my camera with me right now, so I can't put pictures up right now, but soon, friends...soon.  We also saw some less famous places but that are popular with natives and anyone else who knows the island.  Like, the bottle tree.  I guess some guys go there to play some game (I remember thinking it wasn't a very cool game but I don't remember what it was.  Something like checkers.) and they drink a lot while they are there and then they hang the bottles on a tree.  That's it.  But it's cool looking.  We also saw petroglyphs of a fertility symbol on a rock.  We drove through all the different villages on the island and they are all pretty similar, while still being distinctly different from each other, if that makes sense.  We got to go to Carib Batik, where they make batik things (if you don't know what that is, look it up.  It's really cool) and all around Carib Batik was the rainforest and pretty gardens (pictures to come later).


I don't know if I mentioned this before, but we were warned about this place called "Irish town" which, by the way, has no symbols, names, or shops resembling anything remotely irish.  When the speakers were describing it during orientation, our group wasn't quite sure where it was, so we asked our driver to show us where we shouldn't go.  However, he decided to mess with us and say "This is the way that you shouldn't turn...but let's do it anyway."  Haha so we went to Irish town and honestly, it wasn't too bad.  It was pretty much my life:  being irish in a place that resembles Detroit.


I don't remember a lot of orientation week after that.  But then I actually had to start vet school...


Gross Anatomy I
Microanatomy
Intro to Vet Medicine
Animal Nutrition
Physiology I


The first day was TERRIFYING.  I was reconsidering my career choice for a second.  But the second day was much better and it just gets a little more comfortable every day I have class.  I've never had a physiology class before and our professor speaks SO SLOWLY.  So I daydream a lot in that class and then I realize that I just missed about 5 pages of notes.  Luckily he puts his notes online, so I can at least have those.  He only writes on the top third of the page so it's a huge waste of paper, but I'll make it up to the environment when I'm a vet.  I wish I could post a little snippet of a lecture.  I swear, my professor says about 10 words a minute.  He speaks like every word he says is the meaning of life.


Something that I thought was really cool is that all of my professors have different accents.  My physio professor sounds like he's from the island, so whatever that accent is...we'll call it Kittitian (which is a real thing on the island).  My microanatomy professor is Spanish, although she sounds like my French teacher from high school, which is weird.  My intro to vet med professor (the one I've met so far (we have about 5)) is Irish.  My nutrition professor is from England and my anatomy professor is American (not exciting, but again, different from the rest of the professors).  I really like the diversity among the staff and students here.


The semester olympics are this week and honestly, I've been too freaked out about studying to actually go and watch (1st semester represent!) but I decided I'm taking today off from studying and I am going to try to go to the football games tonight.  There is also a mustache party tonight that I want to go to.  Mustache ideas, anyone?  Tomorrow, there is Mr. RUSVM which is apparently really popular but I totally forgot about it, so I still need to buy a ticket.  We are also supposed to get hit with tropical storm Maria starting tonight so we'll see what happens.


I'm really trying to get super involved while I'm at Ross.  I'm trying to go out and do more things, either a school thing or just with friends.  Yesterday during lunch, there was a "club fair" where most of the clubs/organizations on campus had booths set up and stuff.  I signed up to get information about all but 2 clubs.  It may sound like a lot, but I think they have meetings like, once a month and a lot of them are during lunch so it will work out.  Besides, I think it will look really good on a resume and they do have a lot of good clubs.  One of them goes to different places doing spays/neuters or exams (they are going to Guatemala next, then Costa Rica after that, I think).  There is an emergency vet club that gets to learn how to place catheters and they take shifts at the emergency clinic too.  Another one I'm really excited about is ZEW (Zoo Exotics and Wildlife) and they take shifts at different zoos and do other things.  They don't sound as exciting when I describe them but they are really cool.


Two other non-animal related ones are the adventure club that goes on hikes all around the island (this one is the one I'm looking forward to the most) and SCUBA club, which obviously gets you certified and you go on dives.


Another cool thing!  We went on a catamaran trip on Saturday!  It was awesome.  I really miss sailing, especially the itty bitty boats, but I'll take a catamaran too :)  I went snorkeling for the first time and although I didn't see anything super exciting (some people saw a sea turtle, others saw a sting ray, one person saw a water snake), I did see a cuttlefish.  Honestly, the bright colored tropical fish swimming around was enough for me to consider it a successful first snorkeling trip.  I think I should definitely invest in some snorkeling gear, because that's something I would do over and over.  It was super cool.  I wish I had an underwater camera.


Note to self:  write about large animal palpation, white coat ceremony.


It's almost time for my first microanatomy lab so I have to get going, but one more quick note:  I have recently become obsessed with the tv show "Chuck".  If you haven't seen it, watch it so we can talk about it.  I've literally been watching it almost nonstop since Sunday.  It's invading my dreams.  Love it.


Ok micro lab time.  Talk to you cool cats later!