Mid-Semester Break Rocks My Socks

It's been a pretty good week... as of post-friday exams, for the most part... But Mid week-ish I received the most amazing thing in the world! My wonderful friend Kathy bought me a coach wristlet from the outlet store at home and had her mom send it in a package to Kathy... it was a wonderful suprise and super exciting b/c i was really jealous of Amanda and Kathy's bags... :D

We had two exams on Friday: a palpation exam and a parasitology exam. The palpation exam was really good... it's a lot of fun, we go out to the barn and feel around on the horses and learn where stuff is on a live animal. I like it a lot. Plus the exams are easy (and designed to be that way) so it's good. It was a little bit of a rough start though... i was late getting ready and as i was walking down, the herd of people that i'm taking the exam with are walking up and now i'm stuck with a huge stack of papers that i was studying from and they won't fit in my pocket. Luckily Mike's pockets were larger than mine and he held onto them for me. Also, since i didn't leave from lab with them, i had no clipboard to write on... so i was stuck writing on the barn wall for all of my answers... and then, my pen died. It was a good start to the day.... but the exam itself went really well... few hours later we had parasitology and that went well too... at least i think it did, i haven't gotten my grade back yet... and after parasit we were *supposed* to have immuno, which would have been like jabbing myself in the eye, but our prof decided to cancel it, which was amazing and we got an early start to our long weekend...

Friday there was a cowboy party at one of the houses down here, so we got all dressed up in our plaid and headed out on the town. it was pretty non-eventful, but it was something to do...

Saturday morning at 8:30am i went out for a DIVE!! I was so excited to be going out again. It was amazing. We set the whole thing up very last minute and it worked out really well because it was just me, Thad, Mercedes, and some random guy from a cruise ship on the dive. It was *so* much fun, I'm excited to go on our next one already. We did two tanks... the first one was at a two-wreck site, so we got to check both of those out. There we saw a gigantic crab (like the diameter of a beach ball) and also a gigantic eel! The next dive was my all-time favorite so far tho. It was at a reef that's called "the ladder". It gets it's name because there are all kinds of different levels to the reef, so there we a lot of drop-offs and walls. It was the most beautiful thing ever... i love all of the bright colors of the coral and seeing all of the fish. It's just like swimming in a fish tank :) On that dive, we saw a very large barracuda, more eels, some garden eels (they look like seaweed in the dirt) and a small sting ray. It was amazing!

After the dive, i met up with Kathy and Ian at the Marriott and layed out by the pool for a little bit. Then we went home, and I went to eat out at the Indian restaurant (Star of India) with Mike and Chris. It was *amazing* and I'm glad we finally went out there... i imagine we'll be going there a lot in the future... and after that, Ian and Mike came over to watch Willow. It was a good day for me :)

Sunday, Ian, Mike, and I went over to Cockleshell. It was a lot of fun there. We went snorkeling there, which was also a lot of fun... we went over by some rocks this time. (usually we only snorkel in the middle of the bay)... it was really nice, there were a ton of fish over there, they were all really pretty. Ian is bad at snorkeling, so he didn't get to see... he's bad at swimming and gets scared, so he hyperventilates when he starts snorkeling and sucks water into the snorkel... it's just a bad time. Next time we're going to try walking down the beach to the rocks so he can see the fish. lol. For lunch we walked down to a bar/restaurant that is over there which we haven't been to yet. It's really nice, with chairs and umbrellas where you can sit on the beach and they will bring out your food/beverage... or you can sit in the restaurant part which is really nice too. It's owned by the husband of one of my professors. It was really nice...

Later that night, we had a going away party for Mercedes at our house and a lot of people came over. It was a lot of fun. We played beer pong and flip cup and our landlord was really nice about it. She came over and was like, "where's the music? turn some on already!" it was cool. Lots of fun... everyone brought over delicious food and got silly. Lots of fun...

Today was our day off... and I went down to the Marriott to lay out. Mike and Ian came along after awhile and we frolicked in the pool. It was a good time.

Overall, an amazing weekend. Feeling good... lots of school work to be done now that i've slacked off so much. :(

Dog Walking Week #1

So, this past week was our week to walk the school's dogs in the afternoons. These dogs are used for a bunch of different labs/procedures for our classes... they work for us for two years and then they are available to be adopted out, most often by students... amanda has already signed up to take two dogs home and they'll be ready to go in April of '09... So, anyway, it's the job of second semesters to walk the dogs. We split up into groups and each group walks either in the morning or afternoon of one week and the opposite time of another week. It was a good time... nice to be with animals again and for the most part the dogs were good. The picture is of Morangie, who is my favorite. The other dog i walked for most of the week was Rosie... she was an interesting individual... she liked to roll in the grass and then just lay there. Or just lay down in the parking lot and refuse to get up. Good times. So, that pretty much kept the sanity in my life for this week, which was pretty crazy otherwise...

On Valentine's day, a few of us girls went out to bash on valentine's day... or to celebrate our friendship with eachother, whichever makes you feel better... we had a delicious dinner at an italian restaurant here and dessert at the Marriott which was amazing. So good... and then i went home and watched lost. Honestly, how could there be a more perfect night?

I also managed to be a complete dummy and accidentally rub into my neighbor's car (which was practically blocking us into our driveway)... and then proceeded to leave for class anyway without even thinking about it... and then there was a huge ordeal about it... big pain in the rear. pretty sure i'm getting screwed over as far as how much this is going to cost me to fix his car. Also pretty sure the mechanic i was using is not as kind as i had once thought. go figure...

There was a pajama party at one of the "party" houses on saturday night. that was a lot of fun... except amanda fell into a firepit and hurt herself. It's amazing the kind of bruises you get from firepits.... luckily there was no fire, so at least it's just scrapes and bruises...

Mercedes (one of my roomies and girlfriend to my other roomy Thad) is leaving the island for good on Monday of this week. It was kind of a shock that it would be so soon... but she's been talking about leaving early for a couple of weeks now... she was going to school down here for the nursing program and the school she was going to screwed her over as far as being able to work back in the states... so instead of wasting more time and money here she's just leaving ASAP. which is sad for them...

On a random note, there were some crazy wildfires here last night... apparently very close to some of my friend's houses and they were HUGE... i didn't really see much of them, but heard a lot about it today. You could see the smoke from my house... and could hear the fire cracking from a friend's house... there was one fire truck there to try and keep it under control...

*and* some good news from home, actually... Donna had her baby yesterday morning :D it was very exciting, even though I didn't get the message until late... it's a baby boy, named Liam Christopher... and he was 9lbs 13oz. Out of control.

That about covers things, i think...

Cows Need Sun Too

I'd like to start the story of the day (/week/month) off with a little story about the beach...

Our new favorite place to go to the beach is called Cockelshell. It's amazing there, so beautiful and pretty secluded, but there's a bar and restaurant there so you can get food and drink if necessary... so, a couple of weeks ago we were there laying out and my good friend Ian turns to Kathy and I and says "watch out for the stampede." So we look behind us and there are like 4 cows just standing there watching us. Like creepy cow-stalkers... it was very cute. They then proceeded to lay down and join us in sunbathing until some random person came to the beach and scared them away...

Also, I've had an interesting time with my car recently... Before i had left the wheel was wobbling, so i decided to just stop driving it and wait until we got back for my mechanic to look at it... well, we came to look at it and turns out it was just the lug nuts that were loose... interestingly enough... but tightening them didn't really seem to fix the problem b/c it was still bouncing a little on that side of the car and the steering was still a little funny. So, we decide to see if the lug nuts are loose again. In doing so, we find out that the tire on that side is all ripped up and needs to be replaced. Call up trusty mechanic to see if he can do it... he can... in a week. So, we decide to just buy a tire ourselves... and it takes us nearly a week to get around to doing it ironically enough... problem is, we have no idea where to actually buy a tire down here... someone told us about a place downtown. so, we try to drive there and it turns out it's some random sketchy shack... so we drive by and stop at a couple of places trying to figure out where to go. We finally get to a place that will sell me a tire (ironically, it's where my mechanic works) and they ask if i want them to change the tire. I think to myself, how could you change my tire? the car isn't here, obviously and say no... little did i know that they meant put the tire on the rim... interesting how that works. But, we got it all squared away and now the car is going well and everyone is happy :)

Other than that not much going on... beach and class takes up a good majority of my time. We're just finishing up our first round of tests and those all went pretty well for me, so i'm happy about that...

we're going to be doing an anti-valentine's day dinner and dessert on Thursday. We're going to a little italian place called PJ's that has an outrageously good salad, and i think we're going to the marriott for dessert b/c amanda is really hurting for some coffee flavored ice cream... should be a good time. *and* we're planning on trying out the indian place on the island on Saturday. I've heard really good things about it, i'm glad i'm finally going out there... Looks to be a good week ahead :)