School

I recently received an email from my aunt telling me she enjoyed reading my blog, but never seems to hear much about school. I usually just blog about things that I think are funny and activities that I get to do outside of school. School down here is very similar to any other place. I go to class five days a week starting at 9AM. Some days I'm done by 3PM. Others I'm done by 7PM. During my breaks I study and go to the gym. The school gym is free for us to use. It's not very well air conditioned, but there are treadmills, elliptical machines, stationary bicycles and an array of weights, benches and weight machines. Nothing is really top of the line, but it allows for a good workout. And while exercising in a room that isn't very cool isn't the most pleasant, it really makes you sweat and work hard. I also run around the giant field in front of my apartment in the evenings sometimes. There is typically youth soccer or cricket being played. I haven't really gotten the basics of cricket yet, but it is very weird to watch because of the weird bat and the fact that there is only one base. But it's a huge game down here so I see it often.

We went on a field trip with my nutrition class last week. We went to Laura Goat Farm to see how they fed their goats. At Cal Poly we had goats and they ate hay like typical American goats. But in the Caribbean, it's not dry enough to grow hay, so they feed them what I would have called branches and weeds, but they were very excited about the mixture of feeds they feed to their goats. They had probably 40 goats and they were all in a barn in individual little stalls. The barn was weird because it was up on stilts so that waste product produced by the goats could fall under and be raked up by the workers. The thing that all of us were wondering was what if you're under the barn raking when a goat decided to bless you with a shower? No one seemed to care. The farm was created by the Grenadian Department of Agriculture to learn about more economical ways of keeping a goat farm and to teach other goat farmers better management techniques. They showed us their "food processing station" and we were all so... impressed... that we didn't even have anything to say about it. They had long branches that they needed chopping, so they had a wooden table which was made out of 2x4s hammered together. It was leaning severely to one side and looked as if it was about to fall at any minute. One side of the table was solid wood, the other side was a cut out so that any feed "processed" could fall through into collection bags. The blade they had to chop the food was a machete which was screwed onto the table on the tip side of the blade. The operator raised the handle and then chopped down to chop the feed. We were sure our professor was going to chop his hand off in this makeshift paper cutter type contraption. But thank goodness he didn't. After taking us to wade through muddy grass to show us different types of feeds (it had been raining all day, so the ground was very soft, which made the air particularly potent), he told us, "Before we go, I want to show you the feces." He literally was excited to show us a pile of poop! They sold the goat poop by the bag to farmers as fertilizer, which is smart, but not all that exciting to look at. Then we boarded the bus and tried not to throw up as the bus driver drove breakneck speed down the twisty, windy mountain road. I will be so thankful to drive myself at home!

Then on Saturday, our Veterinary Science class had a field trip to our other professor's house. It was also a BBQ, so we all brought different things to eat. My contribution was cookies. It's interesting trying to bake cookies on a foil pan in an oven that doesn't say how hot it gets and mix the dough without a mixer. But they turned out pretty good. I have, however, discovered that I have been spoiled by the fact that my mom's kitchen has two ovens so I can bake more than one batch at a time. In my eventual house I would like two ovens. Anyway, back to the field trip. We all got on the bus and went to her house. She is a nice lady and claims that she is an "animal behaviorist," but I think that's just a nice way of saying animal hoarder. She had 17 dogs, all of whom came bounding to the gate to greet us. Luckily most of them were small so we didn't get knocked over. She had six or seven tortoises, countless birds, countless guinea pigs, and two cats, one of which was blind. She also had guppy ponds all over her yard. Her property was beautiful and we enjoyed handling the birds and petting the dogs. We all miss our dogs! It was also nice to get to go to a BBQ at someone's house and feel like normal humans, instead of being holed up in apartments and dorms studying nonstop.

Another story about school involves my anatomy lab. On the first week of school we all got into groups of four and each group was given a dog. They are all preserved in formaldehyde, but we have skinned them to look at superficial and deep muscles, we have opened them up to study their heart, lungs, liver, digestive and reproductive systems. We spray them with formaldehyde when we put them away, but week after week of chopping away at our dogs have left them a little worse for wear. Luckily our dog is doing pretty well, but one group's started to grow mold so it's green! Another's smells so badly I'm not sure how they can stand it. One drawback to putting so much formaldehyde in our dog is that just standing there working on her makes my eyes burn and run. Sometimes my professor gets out buckets of hearts that are floating in formaldehyde and it's all I can do to keep my eyes open. All of that is pretty bad, but nothing is nearly as horrible as the donkeys. The students further along in vet school have to dissect donkeys, and while I'm sure it's interesting, when you walk into the cooler to get your dog, there are donkey parts hanging from the ceiling, which is a bit unpleasant. But the absolute WORST part about it is the fact that they have barrels of donkey legs. The barrels are filled with formaldehyde and the legs are in there so that the hooves stick out of the surface. Not only is it a bit morbid, but it smells sooooooo bad!! I might have to get a mask when it comes time to dissect them. But that's all the joys of becoming a vet.

I have one more week of lectures and then a week of finals. Then I get to come home! I'm really excited about it. We all talk about the first thing we are going to do, first thing we are going to eat, etc. 18 days until I'm home!