30 June 2013

I love this place.

I don't think I've talked about how much I love being in the UK in a while, probably because I haven't really had time to do anything other than study while on rotations.

Well, I'm saying it. I love this place.

Yesterday I met my sister and S in Borough Market. I ended up getting there early, so I wandered around between all the food stalls and was tempted to get all the fresh produce I could get my hands on. Unfortunately my sensible side stepped in and reminded me that I'm on a student budget and I should be frugal. I settled for buying 2 punnets of strawberries from Kent and some chorizo from Spain.

Oh, and camel burgers.

Seriously, though. Not kidding. We had camel burgers and grilled sweet potato and zucchini for dinner last night.

AND.

I bought my friend L a horse steak.

Now, before you go all "OH MY GOD YOU ATE HORSE WHATAERSF:DLSDKJF>WER", I didn't actually eat the horse, but I'm not exactly opposed to it. There are places in the world that raise horses for meat, and I'm ok with it. It wasn't long ago that the US had horse meat in supermarkets (I think it stopped being a regular shelf product in the early 1950s). And after the whole Tesco horse meat in burgers scandal, I think some kind of taboo has been lifted because hey: chances are you've actually already eaten it. You just didn't know it. So...buy it on purpose and give it a try.

I haven't really had the courage to do it yet, but soon. And Borough Market has a lovely exotic meat stall that carries basically any meat you desire. Ostrich steak? Yup. Springbok jerky? You betcha. I think they were frying up kangaroo burgers yesterday for lunch as well. I mean, seriously.

To think that I was once a stalwart vegetarian. Lulz.

25 June 2013

NAVLE application: check.

I have taken the plunge and applied for the NAVLE (North American Veterinary Licensing Exam). The exam itself costs a whopping $570, and for those of us lucky enough to have to take it outside of North America, there is another $275 fee tacked on. Oh, and the NAVLE application for the good state of RI cost an additional $50.

As if paying over a quarter of a million dollars to get this degree wasn't enough of a slap in the face.

Is this what being an adult feels like? I mean, I have panic attacks about money. It doesn't make me feel better when I'm on EMS and clients complain about how expensive treating their pet is. Well, that's all well and good, but you haven't been saddled with a crippling amount of debt. That you VOLUNTARILY agreed to. I think that's the worst part. I feel like I've signed a deal with the devil to become a vet. Except the devil is the US government (are you reading this, NSA?).

Ah, well. Now that I have that out of my system...

My sister has officially moved in with me for the summer to help cover rent until the new girls move in September. It'll be nice to have her around (to cook and clean! And also to provide support and love). Her boyfriend S will also be around on weekends so we can have mini dinner parties and watch Swedish crime dramas and drink delicious wine (on those days that I'm not freaking out over studying for the NAVLE; have I mentioned how expensive it is and how much I don't want to have to take it twice?).

AND I've only got 3 days left of EMS with the small animal clinic. I'll be going back in the winter to get more experience, and I'm actually super excited. It may be slow, but they're so laid back and helpful and just fun to be around.

Oh yeah. And in 367 days, I'll be done with my final finals. I'm just going to go grab a brown paper bag and hyperventilate into it.

23 June 2013

First Village in England

Yesterday I drove to Norwich to finish collecting data on my research project, which (surprisingly) went really quickly. The drive there, however, was not.

There's this section of road on the way to Norwich that has been under construction for about a year and half now (and it won't be done until winter 2014), so at certain times in the day (all the time) it's super busy. It's about a 10 mile stretch of traffic that takes about an hour to get through. Ugh. Not my idea of a good drive. So instead of sitting in traffic for an hour, I took an alternate route that my TomTom app calculated for me. I drove through England's first village, West Stow, which was pretty cool. And the rest was beautiful woodland driving. I was tempted to stop and take pictures, but alas. I had a time restraint.

Anyway, my research project data is complete. Although I couldn't do an entirely random assortment of the horses at Redwings, I did get to look at 25 horses and take a few pictures for reference, and one picture just because some of the horses were being cute.


So now, it's all about the write-up. My advisor is only allowed to read it once, so I'll probably enlist my friend S. who is in research (and did my stats, she's such a star) to read it through for style and other things.

19 June 2013

Still alive.

I realize it's been a while since my last post. My bad. I don't really have any great excuses. I was just too preoccupied with Equine Surgery (which, by the way, was a really slow two weeks for my rotation group).

I'm now on small animal EMS for the next week and a half (started on Monday), so it's like being on vacation. The practice I'm at is pretty cool; they're very laid back and have let me help out with a few things already (yay scaling teeth!). After this, I go back to the Equine Referral Hospital for some more Equine Orthopedics! Very exciting.

And now, I'm going to watch an episode of Borgia before going to bed. It's scandalous and I love it.

03 June 2013

And on to the next.

Small Animal Medicine is over!

Well, technically it was over on Saturday. It was super difficult, but I'm very pleased with my grade. I worked my butt off to get it, and I'm glad that it matched the effort I put into the rotation.

Anyway, I've started Equine Surgery today. My rotation group is on Orthopedics this week, and our sister group is on Soft Tissue. It's been a bit slow on our side of things, but hopefully it picks up. Considering this is one of the rotations I'm looking most forward to, I'll be pretty disappointed if it's not busy. Soft Tissue had a bunch of cases today, so I ended up hanging out with them instead of sitting in the student tea room twiddling my thumbs. Also, it was way too gorgeous outside today to spend ANY time inside. I'm probably a bit sunburnt, but eh. It was worth it.

We'll see what happens with the rest of this week on Ortho, and next week on Soft Tissue. Fingers crossed I get to see some cool cases and surgeries!