6 More Weeks of Tropical Left

Not much exciting happened today either. My roommate and I went to the grocery store since we didn't get around to going yesterday. That was pretty much the highlight/outing of the day haha. I have been extremely productive while studying though. I got through all of my physiology material for my exam on Monday and a few other tasks on the weekend list started/crossed off. I'm thinking of rewarding myself with an early bed time. Gee, I'm getting so old!! My vet roommate went out with people just a few minutes ago to hang at Bananas. Me? I want to curl up and go to sleep. Sheesh! Hoping to squeeze some beach time in tomorrow afternoon, and then preparing for my physio exam for the rest of the day. But, only a handful of exams left before finals, and I will be officially done with my first year 6 weeks from now! And between then and now we get a 4 day weekend and May 1st (Labour Day) off!

Exams, Exams

Not much exciting going on over here currently. Anatomy exam this morning, physiology exam on Monday. Might make it out into the sun for a little bit one of the weekend days, but I have a lot to learn before Monday morning-bummer. Eat, sleep, study-the plans for the next couple of days (and previous couple)! I really look forward to not having to get up so early on the weekends. Even though they are often bordered by an exam on each side, it really is nice to have a break from waking up so early!!

Swimming, Cake, and Candy

Went for another quick swim today-yay for getting out of my room, getting some vitamin D, and moving my muscles and joints around! The water was much calmer and clearer today (which was perfect because my roommate tagged along). Unfortunately we didn't have a whole lot of time, but it certainly felt good to get out!

It's my vet school roommate's birthday so naturally we had cake to go with it! Unlike most grocery stores, IGA here sells superb cakes! They are so moist and tasty, it's really quite amazing! They taste like a homemade cake rather than something you picked up at your local grocery store bakery (I've now had 6 of them so I feel fairly confident in backing their deliciousness haha). She (and I) love chocolate, so I opted for a very tasty chocolate truffle cake, complete with chocolate shavings! It was super delicious (but then again, when is cake not??).

The other noteable event today was a SCAVMA meeting. A few of the executive board members went to SAVMA symposium recently so this meeting was all about their conference, some other random announcements, and the best part-FREE STUFF! If you happen to be a student, then you totally understand why free knick knacks (no matter how useless or tacky, or how many you already have) are amazing. For those of you who aren't I can't even begin to try to explain. It's just some sort of phenomenon. It's free therefore you feel like you absolutely must have it, and it is clearly the best and most useful thing(s) to add to collection ever! It's like free food. Doesn't matter if you had pizza every day for lunch prior, if you happen to run across it for free on day 5, you will automatically feel compelled to accept, and it will taste delicious (even if it's cold, old, and stale). It's just one of those weird things. Anyhow, my take home was some pretty purple beads, a few pens, and some candy. The candy is significant and probably the best part. Why? It's not because I'm still young enough to think that all candy is amazing, but actually because candy doesn't really exist here. Sure you can get a few select, highly over priced items, but for the most part you're out of luck. You know that candy aisle at the grocery store? Yeah, that definitely doesn't exist here. There are a few things at the registers and that's about it. So getting some candy? Big deal! 

More Swimming

Yay for more swimming today! For today's post, I send you to this link to view amazing coral and fish, because I just spent 15 minutes browsing all the beautiful critters instead of writing. Oops!

Did see this today though, absolutely gorgeous!

Pharmacology

Can you tell when I have exams yet? Seems to be preceded by a lack of post haha.

Today's exam (the first after midterms) was pharmacology. Yuck. But not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be thankfully (it always concerns me when I finish an exam in 7 minutes haha).

I find the topic of pharmacology interesting, but this class seems more like a game of trivia than learning things that I should actually know to be a good doctor. It's all great and well to know a bunch of random things, but the main points are majorly de-emphasized, if they are emphasized at all. Not so useful. It's also kind of frustrating when information is presented only once, but not all together. For instance, two of the inhalant anesthetics we covered cause laryngospasm/bronchoirritation, but they weren't listed together. The first was listed independently (but not solely in the drug) and the second was listed in a table with the first drug, but the first drug was marked as having that effect! Our notes are littered with examples like this.

I'm pretty sure the most frustrating part of this class is that it's not over in May! We still have one more semester of pharmacology to go before we get to escape this madness. I get it, they are in the process of completely overhauling the department, but I'm pretty sure students have gone from learning nothing with the old way to learning a whole lot of nothing with the new team. Hm. Sounds pretty counter productive to me!!

In other news, I went for a swim this afternoon. Seemed like a more fun and exciting way to exercise than Zumba in my room, plus it was gorgeous out! The water was a little rough because it was pretty windy, but it just made me work harder, and I got to see the fish and swim the reef all the same :).

Barracuda!

Went to the campus beach for a bit this afternoon. We thought our sun and swim plans were going to be completely foiled because as soon as we started thinking of going, the skies got dark and started pouring rain. We lucked out though, because the weather actually cleared up, grey skies and all!

I decided to hang out in my new spot and explore. My exploring the coves of sandy patches (there is a lot of long sea grass!) led me all the way out to a reef! So many beautiful fish! I saw many familiar fish along with several new ones and some new corals and invertebrates. Very exciting! As I tried to figure out my way back to shore via the cove maze (next time I'll take a picture of the water, and it'll be much easier to see what I'm talking about), I ran into a barracuda!! He was 1.5-2 feet long and just idly swimming along. My taking interest in him caused him to do a magical disappearing act, because one minute I was starring at him, and the next he was completely gone! And yes, I do indeed know they have teeth.

I absolutely love going swimming and seeing all of these beautiful creatures. I really wish I could share pictures of them-they are just infinitely more beautiful than words can describe. Perhaps next fall I will actually have an underwater camera, fingers crossed!

Happy Friday!

Today was not a very exciting day. We started class at 9 instead of 8 which was nice. Most of the class actually came for the first class this morning. We had immunology, pharmacology, and physiology today. The 3 classes I like listening to lectures. I like anatomy too, but more in a one-on-one setting and in the lab. I'm just too sleepy in the morning.

I meant to make myself get more things done today, to go for a swim, and to call my family, but I ended up taking a 4 hour nap instead. It was pretty awesome though! I love sleeping. I am so sad that I don't get to do more of it.

My vet roomie and I went to Umbrellas for dinner and were in and out in an hour (huge shocker!). The food was very tasty and the service was surprisingly quick. It was lovely to sit so close to the water as the sun set. I wish I had my camera with me!

After dinner we meandered over to the grocery store and wandered around looking for things to eat for the week. No chicken out (well, they had chicken backs which I'm pretty sure had the whole spinal column still in place and chicken feet) but I could have gotten some rabbit loin or shoulder. No thanks.

My vet roomie made tasty strawberry and chocolate cupcakes when we got home. I enjoy being spoiled, makes having a pharmacology exam on Monday morning much better!

Experiments in the Kitchen

I have been trying to spice up my food life lately, I've grown so tired of my limited choices. Yesterday when I was watching NCIS online at cbs.com, they kept popping up a mayonnaise commercial for chicken with Parmesan cheese. I love Parmesan, I had it in my fridge. I also had chicken. And I figured I could steal some mayo off of my roommate (I offered to cook for her, but she would have given it to me regardless). The only thing I didn't have was breadcrumbs, but I did have some Shake and Bake, which seemed like a substitute with potential : D.

So I set off to experiment. A couple things you should know about me: I'm on the fence about how I feel about mayo (thus making it surprising that I would make a recipe with it), although I have some slight OCD tendencies I don't follow recipe directions very well, and I'm a pretty picky eater.

I pulled out our light mayo and cheese, dumped some spoonfuls into a bowl, and added a few fistfuls of cheese. When it seemed like a sufficient mix, I let it be. I also defrosted and repackaged our incredibly frozen chicken. Then I spread the mayo/cheese on top of the chicken and whipped out my Shake and Bake. We had ranch with herbs and original. Unsure which would taste better, I just mixed them together and tossed them on top haha. Then it baked for about 20 minutes. As the 20 minutes passed by, I became more apprehensive and skeptical of what I had just created.

When it was finished, my roommate volunteered to take a bite not knowing anything about the baked dish other than it was chicken. Such a brave soul! We both ended up liking it, and although it really looks nothing like the picture (probably because I didn't really follow the recipe!), it was still pretty tasty. Recipe

Tonight we made a chicken and rice dish. The only thing notable here is that I don't really like rice. I like sticky white rice with Chinese food (mm how I miss that!), and that's about it. Not really sure why, I just don't find it very thrilling. However, I am getting tired of potatoes and pasta, so I decided to try out something new for a change. This was some sort of wild and long grain rice and we cooked it with chicken. It was also pretty good. Not sold on rice, but I didn't hate it, so it can stay for a bit. Perhaps one of these days I will have other epiphanies and no longer dread lunch and dinner decisions!

Textbook Fail

I tend to rarely use textbooks nowadays. It used to be that I used them a lot for reference, especially around test time, but in vet school I've found that professor notes are pretty sufficient. I ask questions when I have them and use Google as needed, but for the most part it's just putting all of the pieces together. One reason I've really strayed from using books is because it seems as though they almost never have the concept I'm looking up. This is particularly true with my physiology book. I swear, the only time I had a question from the notes I wanted to look up, it wasn't covered by the text. That's a lovely $150 paper weight I've got there on my shelf.

Okay, on to today's story. I was working on my anatomy study guide this evening and that involves free hand drawing lots of little pictures for myself (because I remember them best that way). I was working on listing and drawing glands. Some of them were in the notes, but not all, so I pulled out my color anatomy text. Much to my delight, it was full of sketches and I was easily able to complete my little drawings except for one. The preputial sinus had a short paragraph about it, and then said to see figure 35-11/5. I searched the book and came up with nothing, so I went directly to chapter 35 and began counting figures-1, 2, 3...9, 10, end. There was no figure 35-11/5. Guess it's a publishing error? I was equally amused and annoyed because while it was funny to be sent on a hunt for a non-existent picture, coming up empty handed meant that that drawing was still incomplete in my notes! Luckily I was able to find another drawing that included what I was looking for in the book-I tried a Google search, the results were...interesting (though not as graphic as I had prepared myself for).

Hash Pictures

Pictures as promised!

 Cocoa plantation!

 Cute Grenadian girls who really like having their picture taken!

 "kitchen" and menu

 Sour sop fruit

 Exploration of the area pre-hash

 Beer drinking from shoes

 

And so it begins!

 X marking being on the wrong trail :(

 Nutmeg and mangos!

 

 Cocoa pods and a large pile of discarded shells

 One of our many fabulous views!

 Neat looking tree

 Did not know Grenada had pineapples, how cool!

 Donkeys we saw at different points along the way

 Crosses a small river and found this-no clue what it is though

 Passing by the secondary school

 

Non Pareil was the part of St. Mark's we were in

 

 This girl called out to me and practically demanded I take her picture haha

 Got mud? Loss of Virginity certificate

 

One of the many reasons I adore this country :)

Hash!

Whoops! I totally meant to post yesterday, I swear! I got caught up in getting assignments done for today last night (assignments-are rare thing in vet school!).

So first off, what is a Hash? Well, I'm still not entirely certain where the name comes or what it means, but Hash House Harriers is an international organization, and Grenada has a chapter. Basically (from what I can tell), it is a group of people that get together every Saturday and set a hiking trail with false trails and routes that take you through beautiful scenery around the island. At the end, there is a get together with tasty homemade food. Here is the link to Grenada Hash House Harriers.

This week's hash took place in the parish of St. Mark (which is on the northwestern side of the island) at a cocoa plantation. How cool is that?! The bus ride up there took about an hour and fifteen minutes. It was a very long and bumpy ride (Grenadian roads aren't known for being in the greatest of shape)-not so good for those easily made carsick! We left mid-afternoon and arrived with some time to explore the area and take tons of pictures before it all began. I went with my vet school roomie and some classmates.

The hash began with a little "opening ceremonies" type deal. Introductions were made, a couple of unfortunate souls wearing brand new shoes were forced to drink beer out of their shoes and we did a few stretching exercises. The terminology was also explained to the "virgins" (aka people who have never done a hash before). Yes, I kid you not, people with brand new clean shoes have to drink beer out of them-it's a tradition.

Next we set off on the trail! It started off a little sloped and muddy, but this turned out to be nothing compared to what we later faced. We basically climbed a mountain. Literally. And because Grenada's dry season has been rather wet and the cocoa plantation was located in the rainforest, it was plenty muddy. Mud-up-to-your-ankles muddy; I'm-trying-to-steal-your-shoe muddy. Not that we minded too much, it actually felt pretty good squishing around in my shoes since it was hot and very humid. The main issue with the mud was having to try extremely hard not to fall flat on your face while slipping up and down the steep inclines! Thankfully none of the surrounding brush was thorny (which is actually quite remarkable-I swear every plant here has thorns!) so you could grab out without worrying if you started to slip. Miraculously none of us managed to fall (this is quite a feat for me, I am SUPER clumsy!) though we certainly came close a few times! Much to our extreme frustration, we managed to take both of the wrong paths that ended in "x"s. The good news is these trails don't extend on beyond about 300 feet or so, but when that distance has brought you down an extremely slick and muddy hill, you're not so appreciative of the "short" distance because you still have to turn around and face the enemy again!

The hike lasted about 2.5 hours for my group. It was absolutely gorgeous and tons of fun! I saw many different local plants including nutmeg, plums/cherries, lemons, bananas, cocoa pods, sour sop, mangos, and a few I can't remember. The views were spectacular and inspiring, and we got to watch the sun set over the ocean. Doesn't get much better than that!

Afterwards, we enjoyed tasty local food and they held the virgin ceremony. I was busy trying to wash some of the mud off my shoes while this was going on (and I had been pre-warned about what happens at the ceremony-I'm not spoiling the surprise for future hashers though!) so I didn't actively participate. I had the beef and dumplings in spicy tomato sauce for dinner-it was delicious! I can't wait to have time to do another one! Hopefully the next one will include some beachy views now that I have trekked through the jungle (unless it involves getting to see critters and mona monkeys!!). Pictures to come tomorrow when I have some time to let my poor elderly computer trudge through uploading a gazillion precious moments :).
Teaser pics: