I’ve been a real Debbie-downer lately but I’m just so tired these days.  So tired of school, so tired of people, so tired of sweating, so tired of this culture, so tired of this freakin’ island.  I don’t hate it, but I’m having a hard time finding ‘the beauty of another culture.’  I feel like I’m seeing more bad than good… I realize that I’m on a developing country, but where is the beautiful, tradition-ridden culture that you always find in other countries?  If it’s here, I don’t see it… it’s a little unsettling to me that I can only count on less fingers than one hand has, the number of locals that I trust.  I’m not saying that the people of this island are bad people, but the culture doesn’t seem to enourage courtesy or dignity at a great degree and that’s unfortunate.  I think it’s just compiling and I’m feeling dumpy… so close yet so far to the end of this ridiculous semester.

This past week there was an older woman I stopped for… you have to yield for pedestrians here too but the pedestrians here aren’t exactly in a hurry, nor do they stay within crosswalks, or even on the sidewalk for that matter.  Usually they just spill out into the road and then they glare at me for definitely NOT almost hitting them…  Well so I stop, wave at the lady and she waves me to go instead.  I know this sounds really simple and probably silly, but this isn’t something that usually happens to me here… something so insignificant, yet it was impressive enough in my mind to write about it.  I have always believed that if you’re in a crosswalk and there’s ONE car coming that you should just let them through… the car is going to go through the crosswalk before you even make it out to the middle so it’s not going to kill you to wait 3 seconds… what WILL kill you is if you try to cross and they can’t stop in time and hit you.  More than half the time, I get glared at for stopping so abruptly as if I was contemplating hitting them on purpose yet decided last minute not to…

One other time I went through a crosswalk before a person and their child even stepped out onto the road and this van driver half-hung out of his window to yell at me.  USUALLY, the local drivers cross a reckless line that I’ve never even known from retarded teenage boys.  Let’s just say, I say a little prayer and take a deep breath every time I get in my vehicle.

Today’s event left me feeling exasperated though… lots of stray dogs on this island — ‘you can’t save them all’ has never been such an apparent concept than here.  There’s this narrow street area right as you enter the main city, I take this road to go to school… well this one dog was zigging & zagging; I really thought it was neurologic… and of course, there was a dude walking almost in the middle of the road, too.  So cars were driving around the dog and man.  I go by slowly and look in my rear view because that dog was really worrying me… the car behind me went around the guy and then just clipped the dog’s hip!  I screamed in my car because I thought it was going to roll under the tire, but it spun on the ground then got back up just to start zigzag’ing all around the road again.  Of course, the people just kept going as soon as they had clearance again.  Earlier this week, I swore a herd of baby pigs running across the road was going to get demolished by a van and a car going in opposite directions.  Again, watching in my rear view I literally screamed like a banshee — I saw the car behind me slide diagonally because they slammed on the brakes, the van must have slammed on their brakes too and then there was just smoke everywhere.

You just don’t stop here when you’re by yourself.  Especially when you’re going through certain parts of town… the guy kicking the puppy in the side street, the kids chasing a dog into another side street and then hearing it screaming seconds later… I want to stop, but I also don’t want to die.  That probably sounds really dramatic but sometimes looking out for #1 is always going to be the better choice in the long run…

I love fridays… it’s the end of the school week and it’s time for some volleyball!  It also means that the 2-for-1 beer specials are going on, too!  The funny thing about the beers here are that they aren’t regulated well… as my neighbor told me “one batch seems to more toxic than the others.”  Looking back, I can’t agree more — I think between everyone sharing the beer special, since I know I can’t drink the first beer before the second beer gets warm in the freakin’ 24/7 summer heat here, I drink about the same amount every friday… some fridays, I’ll be perfectly fine while other fridays, I find it amazing that I made it home while taking others home as well!  Yesterday was probably one of the funnier fridays so far…  I accidently started Slapping Wars.

Sometime after our game, I lost my depth perception and ended up whacking my friend’s back leaving a huge red handprint.  Somehow that turned into giving another friend symmetrical handprint’s across the chest.  Each finger was distinctly outlined… hopefully pictures are stored on someone’s camera for me to steal and post later.  Of course this all snowballed and there was slapping going on by multiple people.  I felt like I was in elementary school again, but in that fun care-free ‘who cares if we look stupid’ way.  Being an adult can be stuffy sometimes and this was a perfect way to relieve some tension from school and the tests to come… ok, “perfect” is probably not the right word to use, but it was still hilarious.  There’s nothing like reverting back to childhood games to bring people closer together.

Now that it’s no longer friday afternoon, back to doing the responsible thing:  spending some good quality time on campus to study some skulls & help some 1st semesters in Anatomy.  So far, I’ve really enjoyed TAing Anatomy — hopefully I can keep doing it, I can already see how it would help when I had already forgotten things from that last semester.

Thank GOD we have these… it’s only a 3-day weekend, but I will take it!

So, Tudor is growing every day… of course, he was the runt of the litter, but now he’s getting longer and taller each day so who knows how big he’ll really get!  I do really like him and now that we have housebreaking and basic obedience commands down, he’s become really easy to live with — I get the “how are you REALLY going to let him go?” from all different angles, but honestly, I WANT HIM TO GO.  There are many reasons that go with this statement, the primary should be because I CANNOT have another dog.  Nor do I want another dog at this point!  The cat is a different story…

I think so highly of my own dogs that I can easily say ‘no’ to adding another to ‘my pack.’  I do the purebred-thing because I want a certain kind of dog and I commend all of those who have taken in rescues and adopted from shelters, but it’s just not something that I’m readily going to do.  Later in life, when I’m looking for just a companion dog or just wanting a dog that isn’t a doberman then I will DEFINITELY hit the shelters first.  But for now, I’m right where I want to be with my dogs — well, despite the fact that I’m not physically with them at the moment.

This stuff reminds me of the discussions I’ve had with people that start with “Do you love Labs?” I think I’ve found a pretty distinct line between lab lovers and non-lab lovers.  For the most part, it sounds like you’re either a lab person or you’re not.  I enjoy other peoples’ labs, but would I ever own one?  Probably never.  I’m saying this after having test driven one via fostering one several years back.

There is one dog that always sticks out in my mind though when it comes to rescued dogs that aren’t dobermans that I wish could have adopted — her name is Norah.  We took her out of a high-kill West Virginia shelter for AWFP and she was adopted fairly quickly.  Of course, I took that picture of her and knew it was MONEY before I even previewed it.

Norah

Just kidding!  Well, hopefully.  I thought 1st semester sucked the life out of me… 2nd semester sucked it out and obliterated it into little particles!

Where have I been?  Here.  Just running around like a crazy person… before we saw that I was fostering a cat.  Then I ended up with two puppies.  That was not the smartest decision of my life.  They were 5 weeks old and 1 of them finally went to it’s new forever home about a week ago so now I’m down to one puppy and one cat.  So far, I’ve still managed to pull off decent grades given the retarded schedule and puppy boot-camping.

I have a test on Wednesday for Physio II then thankfully there is some time for the dust to settle.  Oddly enough, there’s only 2 months left in this semester and I had no idea — in the single moments, I’ve felt that every day has dragged which made every week seem even longer than the last.  I’ll go more in detail about my previous weeks after this test has been taken… I didn’t want my lonely blog to go stale.

Here’s a picture of my foster puppy, Tudor.  He’s 8-9 weeks old now.  If someone thinks they are just destined to have him, then shipping arrangements when I come home for August could probably be arranged. lol

Meet Tula!

She loves lounging on the pillows!

She came into PAWS through the Feral Cat Project, which I believe is a student run thing here at Ross U.  She used to be a ‘Marriott Stray’ where she begged for scraps from tourists.  I ate there one day by the pool and was begged at by another stray cat, this beautiful Siamese with an F’d up eye, I really wanted to take him home!  Anyway, she was very pregnant when she came into the program and they ended up spaying her and aborting the babies.  She’s still got some mammary baggage going on, but she’s such a petite little cat that it’s almost a cute feature.

The first night she spent in my apartment was interesting and warrants a well written story in a post so I’ll try to add it a little bit later.

For now, I HAVE to get some studying done!
There are seriously not enough hours in the day.

I sold my soul to vet school.

Second semester S-U-C-K-S already.  The days just draggggg onnnnnn and they are by far the longest days ever, even though I feel like we’re getting out of class earlier than last semester.  I think the biggest effect is because we have these ridiculous breaks in between that leave you with 2-3 hours… not necessarily a bad thing, but you’re never really done with your day until much later.  Then of course there are the meetings, TA sessions, etc.

The material we’re learning so far isn’t too bad… yet.  I’ve been sufficiently warned and am thoroughly scared.  But, right now, it’s not so bad;
- In Physiology II, we just finished Water/Water Balance/Osmosis and now we’re headed towards Renal Physiology — Yay, for the Kidney Gods!
- In Parasitology, we’re just plowing through worms, hehe.  Nematodes are roundworms which look just like spaghetti, no joke.  Cestodes are flatter worms which are being compared to fettucine.  I’ll never look at pasta the same way again.
- In Immunology, we’re still in the intro phases so all is good.  This (and Physio II) is what fails a lot of people so I’m trying to stay ahead in this class.  Had a tutor session last night that I found to be pretty productive.  We had to take an extra session to go over Bacteriology because apparently we don’t take that class OR Virology until later, yet its necessary to know for Immunology… curriculum changes anyone?!
- Anatomy II is still just same ol’ Anatomy.  This semester, I’m a TA for Anatomy I… hopefully I’ll be able to help some firsties!  We just did external genitalia, again (we finished last semester doing this) — this poor mare that we keep using for palpation has gotten so cranky that now she sees us and is all teeth and kicking out at the teachers and rearing up in the crossties.  It’s all just so safe.  Note the sarcasm.  She’s gotten really sour with the institution poking her vulva.  I would too!

I currently have a foster kitty and am receiving another one on Wednesday!  It’s really nice having another ‘body’ in here… even just this little cat makes it better than just being all alone.  I will have pictures at some point.

I started writing a Home: Part II entry then shortly thereafter I left the U.S. and lost what little hold I had on my life.  I do have some pictures to share — the friday before I left, Ken and I went hiking in the Cascades in Pembroke, VA and took lots of pictures… of the dogs!

Here’s my favorite:

Here’s the rest of the gallery!

I like how things happen in life that make you appreciate what you previously took for granted. I’m not saying I hate St. Kitts — I’m just saying that I never realized how easy and convenient things can be here in the U.S.. I never realized how much I missed my car, Mr. Honda, either. I was really hating on him towards the end, but driving around today made me realize how much I’d give to have him on the island instead of the P.O.S. that I’m driving now. I have trust issues… as of right now, the island car and I, haven’t quite bonded yet.

Ever since I’ve gotten home, I’ve managed to eat 2 home cooked meals in 7 days. Do I feel gross? YES. But, am I happy? YES. There is going to be some working out once I get back on the rock, but for now, I am reveling in the fact that I missed eating out at fast food chains THAT much and am fulfilling the greatly missed activity. Mmmmm, McDonald’s! Eating what you want when you want it is a feeling that’s hard to beat. I still have much eating to do before I leave… I will have to be rolled back to the island, for sure.

Did lots of shopping already… getting ready for second semester – got more highlighters, apparently one semester was too much for my favorite highlighter. Trying new tactics of note taking and hoping that this time my plan for organization will stick and help me in the end. I was pretty peeved after getting grades… it’s not that I did poorly, because I didn’t, but I didn’t do SUPER FANTASTIC. And of course, it was due to finals — I felt like I put in so much work throughout just to have the end bring me down, that kind of sucks… and duh, I knew it was a cumulative final, but still… was the work in the middle for nothing? It also looks like I will be doing some wheedling with my professors when I get back!

I’ve been trying to just sit around and spend time with the dogs since I know I’ll be leaving them behind again… in fact, I left them behind to go to Northern VA and it turns out my little dog, Oscar, has probably found his permanent home here. For those who don’t know Oscar’s story — he was having major allergy symptoms and he’s definitely neurotic. I left him with my mom when I went to school with tons of shampoos, cyclosporine, holistic dog food, clothing and booties. He used to eat his little paws raw and constantly attacked the imaginary swarm of flies around his head. Well, he’s no longer on cyclosporine or his crazy shampooing regimen. Although, he still bites the flies, I’d say that he’s doing pretty good here as the solitary dog! I personally believe that living with the big dogs stressed him out or gave him anxiety, or something. It makes me feel better about having had to disperse my dogs and leaving the country — they all look great without me! Here I thought I was the magic maker when it came to owning my pets, lol.

I did go out and buy a Peticure for my mom, however. This was my one complaint — Oscar is so spoiled that she lets his nails grow out longer than I like because “he doesn’t like it.” He doesn’t like clippers and he doesn’t like the dremel, but he dislikes the dremel less than the clippers and I just couldn’t forsee my mom using a real dremel tool from Home Depot. In fact, the Peticure isn’t that different from a real dremel tool at all BUT it does have that shavings catcher which is just priceless as long as you don’t turn it upside down and spill it all over yourself. I did do that once. If you’ve never used a dremel on your dog’s toe nails before, this product is actually a good way to start… it’s fairly low speed and you have the plastic “safety” that you put your dog’s toenail through so you’re not going too far, but as long as you know the general rules of dremeling, you don’t really need to buy the specific product unless you REALLY want that shavings catcher, which I do really love.

Things I want to share about dremeling:

1. Don’t grind for too long; I normally do a billion little ‘zips’ on one nail and this grinds down and shapes at the same time. And obviously, don’t do it for too long because it’ll get hot and hurt your dog. Think of acrylic nails, same concept.
2. Sometimes it helps if you grind all of the nails a bunch of times rather than just working on one nail at a time… this has helped me when working with a dog that got really fussy when you would stay on the one nail.
3. Standing or laying? My one dog would rather lay flat out on his side to be dremeled than any other position… my other dog would rather be standing on a grooming table and be dremeled like how you would pick a horse’s hooves. Littler dogs can be easily done while being held in your lap.
4. If your dog doesn’t mind, I’ve found that it’s quicker to clip the tips then grind all the edges for a smooth finish.

Obviously, you should work with your dog on getting used to the dremel with lots of treats and praise before any crazy manipulations. Usually, it’s not an enjoyable activity but it is definitely a highly tolerable one so don’t give up if they don’t like it the first time!

Anyway… where was I? I’m still in Northern VA for 2 more days and then I’m back to the burg. I can already tell this break was too too short!

The flight from SKB was delayed about 35 minutes… I heard that American Airlines leaving on Saturdays is infamous for being delayed. For some reason it took FOREVER to pack luggage into the plane so we didn’t actually take off until close to 5, I think it may have been even later. It’s about a 2.5 hour flight and once we landed in MIA, it was madness. I don’t think I’ve been in a bigger airport and of course we come in on one end of it and have to make a mad dash to what seemed like the other end of it to get to customs. It sounds like a bunch of people missed their connecting flights because of the delays… mine would have worked out so perfectly where my almost 3 hour lay over was only 30 minutes long, if that. But NOoo… things don’t always work out as planned, especially at airports it seems. I finally get my bags, go through customs, re-check my bags then find my gate which is in another direction that takes forever to find! I check all the monitors and they all say “On time” so I do all the appropriate texting and such and get ready to board just to be told that the plane hasn’t left yet for MIA and won’t be arriving until 11 PM…

AHH!!! I just wanted to go home so badly — my flight was supposed to ARRIVE in Charlotte, NC at 11:35 PM so that was really bad news to me. Got comfortable with some food and a drink, started a movie on my iPod Touch and got ready for some waiting. Word of advice… if you’re laying over in MIA — dress warmly, I thought I was going to freeze to death and everyone took all the blankets! Anyway, the plane got delayed again and I finally made it to Charlotte at 2 AM. Got in the car and drove 3 hours to B’burg by 5 AM-ish.

Oh, and one of my bags didn’t make it. I’m waiting for it now… that whole experience makes me not want to go back/forth over breaks.

BUT, I’m sitting here, flanked by my crazy dogs on the couch, and I will keep coming back because I really needed this. Being on an island is a cool experience but it’s not home for me and I was so excited when I felt the cold brisk morning air, I was even OK with the rain! I’ve already made myself sick eating Sonic and chinese food… I have a complete menu of death-by-fast-food that I’m still waiting to fulfill. Besides the food though, I really needed this because I like how it reminds me of why I’m doing all of this. I don’t want to make a silly metaphor but being over there for school for me is like being on another planet. Especially the first semester — being in the dorms with no pets, I literally felt like I had a little hole that I lived in and sometimes you start to lose purpose and feel like you’re just surrounded by ridiculousness. Coming home being with all my crazy beasts, I remember why I’m doing all this. It’s not a vacation… it’s almost like a forced suffering. Thankfully, I’m not a huge beach person so studying while the ocean view is staring at me while I’m studying for finals isn’t as miserable as to some people, but it definitely doesn’t help things. It’s also hard because I decided to not take the dogs and I really wish I was but I’m sure I’m making the right decision in not. I saw people taking animals back on our flights and taking big dogs in big crates was not an ideal situation, especially for my spoiled ones here.

I had a silly fear that Doobie wouldn’t remember me when he saw me again and was going to bark and go nuts when he saw me come home which would have been completely heartbreaking, but he’s still the same crazy dog as when I left him and he definitely still remembers me. I just felt like the time I was gone was so long but it really was only 4 months…

I do look at the animals a little differently now. Most recently, I caught myself petting Tessa and thinking “oh, this is her greater tubercle.” LOL.

I’m afraid something’s going to have to physically shove me back on that plane to go back on May 2nd… not that I hate it there, I just didn’t realize how much I loved being here.

So I know I said multiple times that you probably wouldn’t hear from me again until it was all over, but blogging is a highly effective way to avoid studying.

I am in the midst of finals mayhem and I have to say, it’s every bit as bad as was rumored.

The Nutrition final has been notorious for failing people… #1 reason that people fail 1st semester. Not because the subject is hard, but because our asshat of a professor prides on making our lives miserable. That’s my theory anyway. It wasn’t just his portion of the test that was hard although the entire exam was ridiculous from start to finish… questions were asked that were not emphasized in the lectures at all and some questions came completely from left field. You want to hear something funny? We learned about horse breeds — “This is a Standardbred (everyone looks at the picture), you see how its tail reaches the ground here and it’s mane is long… that’s a Standardbred.” Now imagine hearing that in a british accent and that’s what we learned about the Standardbred compared to the TB or the QH. Apparently, I used to own a Standardbred pony. Imagine that…

So that final was probably one of the worst tests I’ve taken in my entire life. I could have studied another week for it and would have taken it just as badly. I’m hoping when this is all over with that I was one of those annoying people who bitched and moaned about it for hours after but actually ended up with a good grade. I really hope that is me! I went into the test with an A for goodness sakes!

Anyway, so I finally got over Nutrition. Thus my retarded schedule began… Finals each day at 8 AM, eat some lunch and check some email, nap for most of the afternoon, study through out the evening and into the night, attempt to sleep (I’ve acquired this new study insomnia; my brain won’t shut off after I’ve studied and I hate it), wake up at 3 AM to look over some more notes and get ready to do it all over again… x 4 !!!

That last Anatomy test I took turned out well; A for Anatomy Tomorrow may not be as well, but I’m feeling burnt out. It sounds like most everyone else is too. Thankfully, Histo is last… I could probably just walk in and take the test and still be A-okay, but I won’t do that to Dr. Z — he’s been good to me this semester!

I have new plans for this blog come next semester… I’m going to try to use it to my advantage and share with you all what I’ve learned. It’ll be my online mother who asks “So, what did you learn in school today?” And maybe others can learn from it as well. Unfortunately, there is much to bitch and moan about before that will all happen.

Gotta go back to study mode. Wish me luck!

“… like a herd of turtles.” Cody(Tessa’s littermate)’s mom said that while we drove out to Kansas for the 2008 Doberman Nationals in Topeka, KS. It always made me laugh because I’d never heard anyone say that before but also because it was so true. Stopping for gas, Starbucks, walk dogs, food, bathroom… so so true.

The semester really flew. Up until this point in time. It’s the eve of my last normal exam of the semester: Anatomy. I’ve convinced myself that the material isn’t as bad as I think it is so I don’t have to do my normal stressed-out-must-cover-everything-a-billion-more-times-last-day studying. Of course, I’ll still wake up tomorrow at 3 AM and do just that.

This creeping up to the finals is killing me though. I finally did purchase a car a bit ago so that drained the rest of my money so not only is time going by slowly, but I also can’t buy myself coffee or food beyond what I have left which is turning to be just not enough to last me to the very end! It’s really sad… I’ve never been in a situation like this before and I can’t even imagine what it’d be like to be actually starving with NOTHING to eat at all. My situation is no where near as dire as I’m making it sound like. I’m craving chips and I can’t go buy them… I wanted to buy a steak to grill but instead I’ll be making spaghetti & grilling a potato instead. lol

It seems that I will be on a steady diet of spaghetti & mac n’cheese though since that’s about all that’s left. Oh and water. And I’m not the biggest fan of straight water so that’s killing me also. I may have to start drinking coffee black too as I’m getting down to the bottom of my last creamer! Ahhh… yes yes whine whine whine. That’s basically what this blog is… my own personal web space for whining!

In other news… I’ve added a few links to my blogroll. Dolittler has quickly become one blog that I am frequenting a lot these days. Interesting posts there and even more interesting comments. I’m sure I’ll comment about it more later when I’m not actually supposed to be studying… which means it’ll probably be when I’m back in the U.S. – 9 more days!