First Semester-success!

I can't believe I am done with my first semester of Vet School! It is so crazy to me that I've been living in Iowa for 4 months and am 1/8 a veterinarian! I was a bit worried going into finals since its been a long time (~2 years) since I actually had to study hardcore but even with my short attention span I made my way through it and actually kinda rocked it. Not to toot my own horn or anything but I am actually pretty proud of myself....Im ending up with almost a 4.0! I just made the cutoff for As in some classes but its still pretty freaking fantastic and I never would have thought I would be doing so well. Granted this was probably my easiest semester but its nice to start off on a good foot :) At about 3 am on the last night of studying for finals I realized how all my classes were overlapping, it was such an awesome feeling to finally have them all coming together. Most of the time I just study to do well on the test but now I am studying to learn, and with them all overlapping I feel like the stuff will actually stick with me, which is great! Hopefully it will continue this way...I just have no idea how I'm going to continue to shove the incredible amount of information in my brain for the next 4 years...

Also, its all snowy here! It hasn't been too terrible so far, we had one night of a blizzard warning which was mostly because of the insane wind that caused the snow to fall sideways but we didn't get a lot of snow. Apparently the winter here is a lot worse in January and February so I'm gonna try not to jinx myself yet, but I've been handling it better than I thought. I was walking to school the other day and it was sunny and I said Oh its so nice today! and it was like 30-somthing degrees! Which is a big improvement on the few days of less than 10 degree highs but still. Didn't expect to ever hear that out of my mouth-guess I am adapting??

I am sosososososososososososososososososososososososososoosososososoososososo excited to go back home to AZ. It doesn't really equal the universally huge excitement and relief I had when coming home from Europe but its pretty close. I have a feeling it is going to be kinda strange since most friends dont live there anymore, I wont have my car which is going to be frustrating and my cats are staying in Iowa. And my room is no longer my room (my Dad's office now) which is going to be REALLY strange. Speaking of strange...I was kinda forced to stay at home today waiting for the petsitter to come by to pick up keys etc (she hasn't showed up yet ugh!) and it was so weird to not have anything (important)to do. Even when I was avoiding school and being lazy over the semester, I was still worrying about it constantly. It feels like there is something missing haha...where has my stress gone? Its been my buddy for these past months. Not complaining

Life is great. :)

Highlights of my Thanksgiving week off!

I did it! I ran 7 miles in the obstacle race known as Living History Farms Race!

Ok my team "This isn't a 5k?!" walked a lot of it. It was (literally) freezing temperatures. And we had to wade through 6 creeks. And dodge deer. Unfortunately no scrambling over monstrous hay bales as I was hoping but it lived up to my expectations pretty well. People had some fantastic costumes so we are doing it next year and dressing up, but having warm costumes because seriously it took a full 1/2 hr for my hands to even begin to get feeling back in them. I can't imagine how the people who had bathing suits on (or less) felt. Crazies! There were some dudes who had camelbacks full of some kind of alcohol...they didn' t wade through the creeks-they did face-plants and back-falls into them-not on purpose. Soaking from head to toe in muddy (FREEZING!) water. We saw one of the guys at the end...he seriously looked like death.
My ankle held up really well considering the uneven terrain we were running through-aka dead cornfields and streams- and the only injuries I sustained were some bruised shins from scrambling up banks on my hands and knees and a nice scalp wound from a thorny bush I did a headbutt into. Scabs in your hair feel really weird. Not bad for someone as un-graceful as me.

Pics are on Facebook, I didn't bring my camera with me for good reason, it would've been broken within 10 minutes. My fav costumes included the hoard of zombies, 2 diff pacmen, and one guy had a shirt that said I have to poop and he had rolls of toilet paper all over him.


My friend Morgan came to visit for a few days which was totally awesome! I was a bit worried about trying to keep her entertained here in Iowa since I know most people don't think of it as a super exciting place. Highlights: bowling, Harry Potter, Des Moines: free art museum, ice skating outside (!!) where we were the oldest people by like 10 years who didnt have little children, yummy food and of course HANGING OUT WITH ME! :) One day I planned out a 10 hour roadtrip (I cut it down from 49 hours) around mid east portion of Iowa seeing all sorts of beautiful roadside attractions like the tallest double railroad bridge, a 80 ft tall rusty wheel structure built by a 90 yr old, largest frying pan, lg metal corn cob, dark angel in a cemetary which has a death curse when you kiss her (still waiting), big cow, 2/3 of a bridge, community of flags, and replica of a star trek ship. Ames itself has 3: world's largest gnome, largest pitchfork, and large metal woman's head (creepy). Pictures are once again on fb-I am too lazy to put them on here too :)

Doesn't that make you wanna visit me?! If you do, theres still a TON of roadside jems I want to discover!! Most of them were really in the middle of NOWHERE and it got a little worrisome sometimes and Iowa really is kinda ugly in the winter before the snow and once all the corn is dead/chopped down but we still had a lot of fun. We weren't huge fans of the "freezing rain"-seriously if its gonna be cold and wet just snow already! I can't believe the Pac NW got snow before us!


This is my second year in a row spending Thanksgiving with strangers although this one and the last weren't even in the same universe as far as fun times go. I guess I can't even call them strangers...it was full of my new friends and fantastic food and a loooong awesome game of cranium. I am so thankful to be where I am with people here and around the world I can call my friends. And also a little less than a month til I am home, which I am really excited about! Also my cat's deserve a thank you for not pissing on anything recently and being good cuddlers when I'm missing home/company. I am starting to feel super guilty about leaving them for 3 wks during the break. :/


Hope everybody had a great fun and food filled thanksgiving too! Thanks for reading and acting interested in my life and thoughts :)

November?!

It's been a while...October was an intense month but with the beginning of November I am looking at 4 glorious weeks without a single test!!! We've been a bit slammed and it culminated Thurs night-I was up til 4:30 am to get up at 6:30-I didn't have it in me to pull an all-niter studying for respiratory histology. Hopefully I did alright, but at this point I can't generate enough energy to care :)

My favorite holiday, Halloween, is technically over :( but I get to dress up one last time today for a "Be Green" party put on by 2 clubs-they are renting out a floor in a dance club and want people to recycle old costumes. Unfortunately, my old costume parts did not make the cross-country trek with me and I don't know if I feel like being a zombie again (more on that in a bit). So my friends and I have decided to go as things we have learned about in class-I love being surrounded by people as nerdy as me!! I'm going as brush-border which is the epithelium (lining) of the intestines- basically cells with little fringes, interspersed with goblet cells which excrete mucous for protection (water guns!!) I'll make sure to put up pics, but I am pretty excited about it! :)
Last weekend a group of friends and I went as zombies-it was awesome. I loved getting all gory...totally beat out the cute costumes in my book. and I am SOOOOOOOOOOO sick of all the slutty costumes...no creativity and chosen based on how much skin they show. Gross. And it goes for boys too, I dont need to see all your junk either. Plus its really cold here! So heres the best pictures of us I think...



Yea we rocked those costumes! As we got out of the car some group of guys walked by and where like "Good LORD!" so thats when I knew we were good. The pirate was supposed to be a zombie too but backed out earlier...she did dance with a lot more boys than we did...zombie outfit/makeup isn't the best way to pick up boys... ahah big surprise I know. We had some drunk boy convinced it was real blood too which was awesome.

I was pretty disappointed I missed Dia de los Muertos since that is my favorite part of fall in Tucson but ...someday I will be back and do it again.


I got really excited the other day because I found some cheap pomegranates and remembered last year at about this time I got to pick them fresh of trees on my 6 mile hike to and from the town and my wildlife sanctuary on the top of the Greek Island. Life was pretty simple while I was there and sometimes I miss being there, it was a really beautiful place (the island, not the wildlife place) but I wouldn't trade my life right now for anything. Its just funny to think of my state of mind a year ago, there is no way I would've imagined I'd be living in a trailer next to the vet school I am going to in IOWA. NO WAY. Life can be so strange sometimes. :) Hope all of you had a great Halloween/dia de los muertos and have a great weekend!

Midwestern adventures

Theres a tradition here at school that the Beef club puts on...the hayrack ride. At 4 on Friday Vet students all grab some pudding, jump on a hay rack pulled by a tractor and eat the pudding on the hour and half ride to a professors house where there is more pudding and other food and a nice big bonfire. Then they get a ride home on a van by midnight.

Before you embarrass yourself like I did....pudding = booze. apparently.

So thats mostly what I did. And it was awesome! We had 3 tractors pulling us but the hourish ride turned into 3 when our tire blew out on the hayrack. It was cool though because we were in the middle of nowhere(seriously I still have no idea where we went or how we got there) surrounded by corn fields, which people used as bathrooms like its the most normal thing to do, plenty of dried corn kernels still left on the stalks to use as ammo for pelting each other and good company. And a gorgeous sunset. Once we got to the professor's farm-also NO idea where it is or who the professor is-there was indeed lots of "pudding" and a decent sized bonfire. I don't really know how it happened but the hours went by fast-mostly dancing and belting it out to the awesome playlist. I only had to walk away twice-once for a country song and the other for Miley Cyrus...I will NOT put my hands up or move my hips like yea...and I have a problem with 30 year old farmer boys singing along to that crap, its creepy. and ok, maybe slightly amusing. but only slightly.

Some 10 hours later, yes I just said 10, I found myself and a few friends waiting for the last van at 2 am. Definite time warp, but a totally awesome one :) Also I woke up the next morning with incredibly sore pointer fingers on both hands. No idea why :)

Saturday was another gorgeously warm and sunny day so I ditched my studying for the histology test and instead spent the day walking around town and the nearby school gardens taking pictures of the changing colors of the leaves. I never understood the big deal about fall but it truly is really nice :) I would post pictures but I'm lazy and only want to post them once so check out fb-I'll eventually put them up there.

Sunday I woke up at 5 am and drove over the the vet school to pick up some friends who are part of the ZEW club( zoonotics, exotics, and wildlife) and I drove us to the Minnesota Zoo about 3 1/2 hours away. We got to see the prettiest sunrise over the corn fields (like postcard pretty/stereotypical midwest) and studied a bit of histology but mostly just hung out. We also passed a big wind farm which I didn't know where out here and some girls had never seen one before. Passed some funny places like "Manly forest" and "the sexiest casino of the midwest" in what else? An old barn. I don't think they get much competition out here. We met up with the rest of our club and got a hospital tour by a vet who might have been the least enthusiastic person I have ever met. I was so close to falling asleep standing up. The one interesting thing about him was he could seriously be Emery from the future, I could NOT get over how similar they looked-super tall, SUUUPER skinny, skinny jeans, big glasses. He was missing the mountain man/hobo beard but I'm hoping Em grows out of that by the time he hits middle age.

We then went into the actual zoo which was a good size and pretty nice, as far as zoos go. I wasn't super depressed walking around so thats always a good sign. They had river and sea otters which are always my favorites. And we got a backstage tour by the keepers for the bears, tigers, and camels. I have never seen a camel as big as the bull was, he weighed a ton! Literally, a ton-2,000+ lbs. His head was like the size of a washer. Seeing the tigers close up totally rocked and the bears have a sweet set-up there. Drove back with the sun setting on our other side. Again, pics will be on fb, I'm lazy.

So this past weekend rocked. And I just took my 2nd histo test (after our 2nd anatomy last week) and was looking through my calender-I have at least one test (usually 2) for the next month. But I refuse to be beaten down, especially with my favorite holiday coming right up, Halloween!! School can suck it, I am having way too much fun here! :D

Universe Bitch Slap

So apparently I need to stop complaining. Because the universe has delivered a few bitch slaps that my face is still smarting from.

A few hours after my last post complaining about stalker boy, I saw him at the gym and of course, he, not being like a normal person who would rightfully just avoid the situation, decided to come talk to me. I was super rude and it worked-he hasn't talked to me since which is just fine with me but I do feel kinda bad : /
Apparently no one I've met so far is a fan of his and everyone calls him boyscout because of how he does his hair (like a 6 yr old going to church whose mom slicked it down and parted it on the side) and the fact that when he raises his hand his fingers are in the form of the boy scout pledge.


Reason #31 why he is creepy: my friend Sharon got his number and texted him "I like your hair and your affinity for merit badges" which we thought was hilarious until we get this back a few hours later "Thanks.....Sharon. I don't know what you mean by merit badges though."
We can't figure out how he knew it was her, they have never really spoke and she is from CT, and so are like 10 other people from our class so even ruling her out by elimination is a stretch. uhhh?


I was also complaining last week about the fact that my normally well-behaved cat Marley decided my open drawers were a much better place to use than the litter box, and what did I discover yesterday as I was petting Bart..........................FLEAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you kidding me?!?!?

I had to look up the signs on the internet because a) I have NEVER had to deal with pets having them and b) I had no clue how they would even have gotten them since their cohabitant Agnes (Kelsey's pitbull) is on preventative stuff and they have never been outside.
So yea, they had them, and I immediately went to the store (itching all the way) but luckily talked to my roomie before I wasted money-word to the wise-dont buy the crap in the store, go to your vet and get the preventative/killing stuff to put ON your pet and some awesome spray that kills/sterilizes the adults, larva and eggs and stays around for 200 days called Mycodex. Shampoos dont do much and the stuff they sell on the shelves isn't very strong.

So exactly 7 loads of laundry later-I am so thankful we don't have to pay for water here-between the peeing and now the fleas I would have spent a fortune on washing and drying-pretty much all the fabric my cats have come in contact with is washed and sprayed down-including the carpet which I think is the cause of this disgusting problem. They stayed in the bathroom for the 6 hours the meds took to work and I swiffered after and felt like a terrible owner-there was a LOT of dead fleas for 2 cats to be harboring. I am hoping the problem is under control now.

Surprisingly, I was seriously grossed out;I know normally this would be a NORMAL reaction, I know, but I dealt with fleas on a daily basis in Greece. Including being able to see and feel them crawling on my skin and clothes (which wasn't happening yesterday) and I didn't get as creeped out as yesterday. I hope I'm not reverting back to being a squeamish wimp. Does this mean I can't handle thousands of maggots in food or piles of dead bodies anymore too? Hope not, I liked being a bad ass. :)

So long story short .....I LOVE MY LIFE! ok universe? I am VERY grateful for being able to be literally living my dream of going to vet school, having lots of great people around me, and am happy to have the company of my two cuddly cats, even if they have an infestation or pee on my stuff.

Activities in Ames

We had an Art Fair!!! It wasn't quite as fantastic as 4th Ave Street Fair but it was like a little sister, trying really hard to emulate it and almost succeeding :) I didn't get anything partly because I am broke but mostly because my brain isn't organized enough yet to be thinking about X-mas presents or other gift giving opportunities. But it does give me hope that there is enough culture in this small town to keep me happy for another 3 and half years. Speaking of culture-I found an awesome Thai place with a whole menu (ok its like a half page) of veggie stuff and had some super tasty sweet and sour tofu. Now that I have friends I can go to restaurants to try things and not feel like a loner :D


I went tailgating yesterday, even though it was freezing and rainy-see I can be a tough mid-westerner too! Well ok, by the time I dragged by butt out from under my comforter it had stopped raining and I did have 3 layers on but whatever! Apparently right before we got there some coked out guy was chasing one of my fellow students around our bus and he got tackled by law enforcement and taken away on a golf cart. Think that's classy? Just wait...

I ended up babysitting 2 of my friends since they got toasted pretty early on and we ended up at a trailer (in my trailer park) surrounded by big-ass farmer boys who were doing a power hour(shot of beer every minute for an hr-might not sound like a lot but you work your way through a 12 pack pretty fast), smoking and blasting country music all outside. I was thinking...wow ok I'm finally experiencing what I was fearing about living in a trailer park in the mid-west when 2 of the boys started shoving each other in a race to pee in the bushes on the side of the trailer (they had a totally adequate bathroom INSIDE-like 2 steps away). Then one of them fell on me-with his pants ZIPPED UP thank god. His apology was a smile (with a missing tooth) and then he preceded to lie to me about how he was a vet student too and he was taking a class called VM 123 (all our classes are 300 level or over and no such class abbreviation as VM) called "Cow/calf" and all he did for class was shove his arm up cows butts. And when he finished chugging his beer he threw the can into the bushes in the front yard. I know what you are thinking.... CLASSY! right? I love my life.

Update on the stalker boy from my pseudo date...still creeping. He has texted me EVERY single day asking to do one thing or another and I either ignore him or decline and my "no thanks blah excuse blah" have turned a lot more harsh and still...they keep on coming!! Luckily he hasn't tried to wait for me after class and walk me home in awhile and really doesn't try very hard to speak to me in real life so I don't know what the deal is. Seriously though, how DENSE can his head be?! Suggestions?? I don't know if I've ever had to deal with someone this bad before and normally I'd just be a bitch and make sure he didn't want to hang out with me ever again buuut since we will be in school together every day for 8 hrs for the next 3 years I dont want to make any enemies.
On the bright side, my roomie and other friends all think it is quite entertaining and are getting a big kick out of it. It doesn't help that he is incredible socially akward and looks kinda like a Who from Dr. Seuss

My room

Here are the pics I promised a long time ago of my room.






Note-the framed and signed picture of some of my favorite people was one of the first things I hung and I look at it everyday as I get dressed(since its above my dresser hehe) and the black and white blanket is Marley's absolute favorite spot to hang out on




Also, I actually put pictures in the frames on the wall now so they aren't just empty. and that is my spiffy computer on the bed-it has a fingerprint scanner on it that I use to log in-how cool is that?!



I love my wall of closets-I dont think I could do without it!

I'll take some more pictures of the other areas and post those soon too-I promise! :) Gotta get back to studying now

C= DVM

Well I survived my first two tests of Vet school! The first one was Cell Biology on Wed and Anatomy on Thurs. The bio one wasn't so bad, a lot of review but anatomy...oh my god. Every part of every bone, every muscle including its function, where it attaches and all the nerves that innervate them! And my favorite-they picked the most complicated, convoluted part-the skull-to teach us on the day BEFORE the exam! WTF! This was how I studied the night before: all my bones of my bone box spread out-I guess it was a fairly large dog haha



The anatomy test itself wasn't too painful and I got a high B so I am pretty pleased with myself :)
It had a practical portion where they pinned certain muscles/parts of bones on our cadaver dogs and we had to identify them and then a multiple choice section (thank god). It felt very nice to get it over with but strangely I wasn't very stressed out beforehand and I didn't really cram, I got a decent amount of sleep the night before and the usual nervous stomach ache I get before a major test was absent. My undergrad self would never have believed it :) Grades finally don't really matter-a C=DVM as they told us in our orientation so I don't have to kill myself to get As anymore and its AWESOME! Of course I want to do well, getting a job/internship/residency do slightly depend on having a decent GPA but its nice to have the competition lowered quite a bit.

Also, they have about a bazillion clubs here and of course all are super interesting and I want to join them all! I have restricted myself to only:
SCAVMA-big club everybody joins which is an extension of the vet association we will all be a part of when we graduate;
Equine
Cow
Pig
ZEW-exotic and wildlife-I decided to be a fund-raising chair for this one-its a small time commitment and looks good on the ever present resume
Shelter
Emergency medicine for all animals
Emergency equine team-I'm on call for intensive care, births, and surgeries (soo excited!!) Business-another one for the resume and I have no idea about any financial/business like

And I am undecided about the holistic club and reproduction. The only thing that is holding me back is all these clubs have dues ranging from $10-20+ so they add up quickly and I'm afraid if I join too many they will all overlap with meetings and wet labs -which are basically different activities dealing with the specific animals or topics they are about. Decisions decisions...

Oh and one added bonus of learning anatomy so well, I now know which muscles are injured in my still (seriously?!) swollen ankle. Not that I can do anything about it, but I thought that was kinda cool :)

Farmer's Market Joy

Des Monies Farmers Market is AWESOME!! It is massive but not too crowded and have lots and LOTS of food, mostly produce-I have never seen so many veggies in my life! I went and got some fresh mozzarella, basil, and granola which are all super tasty and the other time I went I got some delicious sweet corn ice cream-which was basically like rice pudding with chunks of corn-it worked somehow. They also have some cool craft booths, it kinda fills the void left in my life from the 4th Ave street fair in Tucson. I think it will be closing up in October since it will probably be too cold to go outside for an extended period of time but I'm gonna try to go as often as I can before then!

Holy crap school

Just wanted to show off my massive stacks of books and my bone box :) I wont put up my pile of flashcards-thats just depressing.

So I've survived 2 weeks of vet school so far! It has been intense but not as bad as my nightmares. So far individual classes have not been too difficult, the hard part is just trying to swallow the mountain of information everyday. I am hoping I can get some kind of system going where I study every day...right now it has been pretty hard to try to do that, I've never been one to study much until the night before a test so this whole being prepared thing is a bit tricky and kind of a pain in the ass.

3 day weekend HALLELUJAH! I haven't studied as much as I have wanted to but my brain is enjoying its rest. Yesterday (Saturday) I went tubing in Eldora-about an hr drive away-with my roommate and some other people. Pretty much consumed all of my calories in beer that day which made for a fun and relaxing float down a river and one hell of a hangover a few hours later. I met some trashy, skanky people who decided it was a great day for celebrating Mardi Gras and wanted girls to flash their bazoombas for some crappy beads. While I passed, I got to see some awesome saggy titties and they got some beads so everybody wins I guess. Some BAMFs made a stereo system out of wood, car speakers and a solar panel and figured out how to float it down on the river so we had some good music and like I said-interesting company. Woke up a few hours later in my car-I didn't drive anywhere just fell asleep in the seat-apparently people thought I took off with the saggy booby girls for the bachlorette party since no one could find me. :) I have some standards people! the floating/camping place had some horrible cover band playing and I took off to go home after consuming every scrap of food I had with me. No pictures unfortunately, those saggy gems will just reside in my memory...no reason to subject you all to that acute kind of misery.

Plans for my last day of freedom-study my bone box, and 3 in stack of flashcards for anatomy-read a few chapters for histology and go over the weeks notes. Saved all the real good stuff for last :)

Oh and here's an update on my ankle-it really hasn't gotten any better as far as appearances go

:(

Bart pissed on my bed today so he is definitely on my SHIT list. I have no idea what to do with him...it doesnt make any sense.

Tailgating

I had no idea tailgating was itself a sport. AZ peeps, you guys have no idea how serious it is over here. Camping out a full day beforehand-and paying for spots ranging from $20-50 for one night. Buses/RVs/cars are painted permanently(!) with school colors and logos, and dont even get me started on the other decorations-including clothing.

















Grilling meat and corn (of course) and drinking lots of beer, I'd say more than half the people didn't even go to the game, its more of an excuse than a reason to tailgate here. Vet students get in on it too-we have our own bus! Pretty sad looking thing but its awesome and a fair amount of people showed up too.










In other news, my ungraceful self has reared her bruised head and when I was running the other day I tripped on the edge of a sidewalk and some grass and got a nasty twisted ankle and skinned knee.
I couldnt walk at all for awhile and had to have my roomate pick me up. I forgot just how horribly painful it can be...a few days later now I can walk with only a slight limp and my knee is finally done oozing and is scabbed up. heres some awesome pictures...I'll update when the bruising gets even prettier on the ankle...I'm still waiting for my foot to get back to a normal size.

Shame

This is Bart posting-my mom is making me do a public apology for my misdeeds. I pissed on the couch. Numerous times. and then I got so cocky about it-I mean who doesnt want to smell my awesome urine??? I did it in front of Mom and the new girl-who apparently owns the couch. SO they yelled at me and my tail got as wide as I am-which if you listen to my mom is apparently too wide-and I've been imprisoned in the bedroom ever since. Which isn't really that bad since all I do is sleep and eat but still. so I'm sorry ok Mom?

I saw that after all my hard work that you put the couch out by the dumpster which is a shame because it was really starting to smell just right. I guess I need to be more stealthy next time. I mean...there won't be a next time. Can I have my dinner now??

Yay for school!

Roomate and I on our first day of Vet School!

Well I've been waiting for over a year to start school and it has finally happened! Orientation was interesting-they threw a lot of information at us and had us play a lot of silly games but it did accomplish their goal of us getting to know some people. There are 149 students in my class and I think I know the name of about 10 and probably could recognize another 20? Apparently we will get to know everyone...I guess over 4 years thats enough time :) so far I am trying to hold off on judging since I will have to spend the next 4 years of my life with these people every single day, all day.

The ratio of girls to boys is about 70:30 and the boys hang out in little packs-its kinda cute but also totally sucks-how are we supposed to talk to them when they have their little groups? Now I know how boys feel when they want to approach a girl who is in her group of friends-it takes more balls than I have to put yourself out there.

As far as classes go, most of the professors are totally awesome, and mostly it has been review-although they tend to go at lightspeed and review a few months of undergrad classes in one 50 min lecture. My classes are: anatomy/morphology, microscopic anatomy/physiology-bascially histology, molecular and cell biology, nutrition biochem, radiology, case study, clinical foundations and veterinarian in society.

Anatomy is insane with the all the crap we are supposed to memorize but we get to cut open dogs and explore so its hard to hate it, and in clinical foundations we actually get to work with a live dog which is nice :) shes a cute little beagle. We also get a box full of bones to play/study with so thats been kinda cool too. The instructor who gave them to us has a German accent so when he says it it sounds like boom box-I was really confused for awhile what stereos had to do with anatomy until I saw them. :)

This is my roommate Kelsey and I after our White Coat Ceremony-we are kinda a big deal now an pretty official. I now have a white coat, stethescope and scapula (from the dissection kit) so watch out world!

Internet Issues

So I've had quite a challenge getting connected to the real world...finally got internet (permanently I hope) today, 8/21, a full 2 weeks after it was supposed to work. So I've got some posts that are backlogged and will be trying to catch up in a hurry so I'll try to keep it chronological but it may not be awesomely accurate :)

Iowa State Fair

" I went to the Iowa State Fair and all I got was type II Diabetes"

Too true.

Iowans take their state fair VERY seriously. They camp out for an entire week, and its all they do. It is miles long and obviously takes more than just a day to see everything. They have all kinds of animal exhibits-including mini cows! (I didn't know those exisisted) and some other massive animals like:

Buster, a 3022 pound bull-i didn't get a picture of his balls

but trust me they were equally impressive :)

Also a massive pig that was about the size of a small cow but all he did was lay around

In addition to massive animals, they had massive food and pretty much everything on a large scale. And I could not find food that wasn't deep fried, covered in grease or sugar. I ended up just eating the apple and energy bar I brought with me and some pizza. Also, they had everything imaginable available on a stick-it was totally ridiculous!

They pulled people around on tractors (John Deer of course) and have lots of different exhibits and shows. One famous one is the butter cow which was pretty much life size and they also did a bit of Dr. Seuss too.

I was exhausted after a few hours-I can't imagine doing it for a week but apparently they live off this kind of stuff so there you go! I guess if you are ever in Iowa in August you should try to see it!

Flooding

SOoo this sucks. The above pictures were taken a few days BEFORE all the massive flooding happened so it was already saturated and then it rained for 3 days straight. SO it flooded all the main roads, parking lots, highways and broke a water main which means all the drinkable water flowed out-into the river and Ames has no water. Luckily Kelsey (my roommate) has been living with her sister in a nearby town so I took my cats down the only drivable road out of Ames and stayed there for 5 days because thats how long it took to get water back in the faucets.

Lucky our trailer was on higher ground so there was no damage but some places, like the school's basketball court was up to 6 feet underwater and the rec center* was totally flooded too.

*the gym is still closed a month later! grrr

Discoveries

After a much less teary goodbye than I was expecting from my parents I had all of Ames to discover by myself and get set up. After much organizing and some tetrus like skills I was able to unpack 90% of my boxes and fit everything! Packing all of my stuff I was getting a bit disgusted with my materialism and the fact that I had enough stuff to pack numerous cars full and I didn't use most of it. Since I lived out of a backpack in Europe for 4 months I knew most was superfluous and unnecessary. However unloading all of it, I was glad I had it. Its the stuff that make you feels home, the silly knickknacks that don't serve much purpose but to remind you of memories or different places and be comfortably familiar when everything else is different. On that note however, I think a big cleaning is necessary at least every 2 yrs so you aren't stuck going through figurines from elementary school or sneak attacks of ex-boyfriend pictures/letters that make you want to puke a little...or a lot.

Some awesome things I discovered right away: TARGET**, Panera (fantastic bakery/restaurant), parks everywhere, salvation army ($10 microwave ooh yea), and more Mexican restaurants that any other nationality although I haven't tried any yet-not expecting much.

**I didn't allow myself into Target for a full week and half-more self control than I thought was possible since I knew once I went in all bets were off. And sure enough, once I did go, I spent $15 in the dollar section-among other things but I was good about passing up my kryptonite-dresses with pockets and flannel shirts since I really am super broke.

Hy-Vee is the grocery store here and awesomely enough they have my veggie food in good quantities, no facon but I'll survive I guess. There is a rumor that Trader Joes is being built in Des Monies- a 1/2 hr away which I would drive many times over to get my hands on so I'm pretty excited about that.

Out my room window is the back of the Vet School and a nice little exercise trail so thats pretty convenient although running here is more like swimming in a swamp than running in Arizona. The humidity is something I definitely need to adjust to, I never knew I could actually have sweat pouring off me in such quantities...like the shirt was about as wet as if I had jumped into a pool. nice visual I know. :)

Welcome to Ames

We woke up on Friday, 8/30, to a very wet city, with rain expected all day. Great day to move! We had been pretty lucky with weather and encountering only sprinkles along the way(with the exception of my little skidding adventure) so my stuff was up to this point safe and dry. We didn't have much choice so we just started moving things, a few stuff got wet or scratched but for the most part, it was all just fine.

I was worried about the condition of the trailer since Kelsey had called me while we were still in AR and warned about numerous problems with flooring, toilet, and sink being rotten/falling apart and the ugliness of the walls. My room was a pretty hideous olive green/wood paneling mix so we first painted the walls a nice sea-foamy greenish color. The carpet is nasty with stains and smells and will be replaced by wood flooring soon. Kelsey herself had been staying up til the wee hrs of nights painting the walls to make it look a LOT better. The toilet problems had already been fixed and overall, I was expecting a small, rotting and ugly place (I had a nightmare the night before about what it would look like) but it turned out to be more roomy than I imagined, a little smelly, but not too shabby.

My parents and I stayed in the hotel for a few nights while we waited for paint to dry and to set up furniture and not only did the hotel give internet, free breakfasts where I stole lots of cereal, oatmeal, tea bags and whatever else fit in my purse, and I also stole the phonebook which has served me very well as far as getting around with no internet or people to ask for directions. Iowa is good for my morals ;)

Once the paint dried-it took much longer than in AZ surprise surprise... we were able to put stuff in my room and were able to interpret the sweds directions semi-successfully from IKEA and my room is a bit crowded but I was able to fit all my crap surprisingly!

Once the stuff was mostly set up, my parents left in a much emptier truck on 8/1 and I was now on my own.

The drive in

We left Tues 7/27 a.m. with my car literally packed to the roof, hitched to the back of our large diesel truck, also packed, the back totally loaded up and tarped down and both my parents and both the cats and I all in the cab. We thought it was roomy until we had to share it with the cat carrier, food and water bowl, and litter. I had no idea cats were so high-maintenance. After a few stops before we even reached the highway (gas, walgreens, exchange of keys with Emery) we were off-headed north east.

The cats traveled very well considering...Bart decided to be his typical difficult self and before my Dad could throw him out the window because of his incessant crying we drugged him up which made him drunk for a full 8 hrs. He could not really get around without misjudging distances and falling. Also his inner eyelids wouldn't close/open fully which just made him look pretty damn creepy and alien like. Marley was a pleasant surprise and adapted surprisingly well, her favorite spots were atop the carrier looking out the window or on the ground. Bart's of course were on the center counsel where he was most in the way or on whatever lap he could navigate onto.

We swapped driving every 2 hrs and took turns in the back with the cats as we drove across NM, upper part of TX-unfortunetly, since I hate it-and OK to Arkansas where we stopped Wed afternoon. OK totally sucks with toll roads and construction and I almost crashed as a result of some rain and skidding-luckily it was just a close call but rattled me a bit and I am definitely not looking forward to dealing with icy roads and lots more skidding. Scenery was of course beautiful in NM with the desert and mountains I've grown up with and love, TX sucked because its TX and OK was full of green everywhere.

Arkansas was nice because we got to stretch out our very cramped legs and visit relatives. We walked around near campus in Fayetteville, got some self-serve frozen yogurt which is always awesome and have some food that took more than 5 secs to make at a roadside store. In AR pets tend to just roam with the geese, ducks, chickens, cats, squirrels and dogs all fending for themselves. Definitely a different way to go about things but its worked pretty well.

We were off the next day, I think the cats appreciated the break from the car too, Bart just about scratched my head off trying to get him back in the truck. Made it to Ames by Thurs night and met my new roomate, Kelsey, and got the key for the trailer. We made it back to our hotel, snuck the cats in and fell promptly asleep.

Lets do this!

Alright, this is my way of keeping track of far-away friends and basically Jody convinced me it was a good idea. Originally it was going to be Bart and Marley's (the cats) but since their existence centers around the food bowl and they eat the same thing every day, besides whatever Bart manages to steal off my plate, they will only be making guest appearances as opposed to chronicling the bodily functions of fatty cats daily.
I'll catch up tomorrow, right now its storming like crazy and I'm hoping things dont any more flooded then they are.