Viva Las Vixens

On Tuesday there was a Sports and Societies fair in Summerhall. I ended up signing up for the Pony Trekking Club, the Expedition Society, and last but not least, the Ladies Football Club (soccer for you Americans)!!!!








Fast forward to Wednesday afternoon, 2pm. I hustle over to Summerhall (late as usual) to meet the girls for practice only to learn that they had already walked over to the Meadows. So I had to go wander around the Meadows until I found them tucked away into a little corner. Turns out that a lot of girls are still out of town, and a few are also in the Rugby club (boo). We did a few introductory rounds of pass the ball, then had a relay race (twice) and my team lost (twice). To be fair, the grass was real slippery and I fell (once), but so did another girl.

After that, we played for football! Yellow shirts versus non-yellow shirts. My team won the first round, and I helped score two or three times. The second game was neck and neck , and we only lost because I was an inch shy of blocking the ball. Playing goalie was a lot of fun! My most epic almost-save involved me knocking a girl over short of the goal, but when she feel she some how tapped the ball into the goal with the bottom of her foot! It was such great fun. During the term we have practice twice weekly, once on the school's turf field with coaches, and once in the Meadows just for fun. I think our games are on Saturdays.

Later that night, we met back at Summerhall (I was not late!) and walked over to the captain's flat for some pre-partying before heading out to Lava/Ignite for a wild foam party. Words cannot describe how much fun we had. Let's just say that I wowed the Scottish girls with my Miami dancing, Pookish got hit on by this weird, short dude, and foam is an incredible thing to have at a club. We dance so much that my legs still hurt two days later!

Monday Nite Madness

Ok, so this is a little out of order, but I'm blogging as I remember. Monday was the first official day of Fresher's week, even though the vets unofficially began on Saturday.

Monday began with this awesome free lunch at Southsider's, the official vet watering hole. We all got a free bag o'goodies at our very first Southsider's/Dick Vet t-shirts! Lunch was a tastey combo of chips (aka french fries), curry, chili, and some pastry stuff with stuff in it. There was such a huge croud of fresher's there, that the GEPers were lost in the crowd. We eventually got tired of the noise and went on an eshopping spree across town.









Since Lindzie lives so close the the stores we did a lot of back and forth to drop things off before treking out to Princes Street to marvel at the glory that is the POUND STORE. Everything you need for only a pound! I got these really cool stripped knee socks, a thing of salad cream (the most amazing condiment in the world), this cute hanging basket thingy, and various other things.
On the way into the mall we passed by this candy stand what was so huge my pancreas fainted and I got contact diabetes. No lie. There are actually quite a few candy shops like that around town. I don't understand how there are not more obese people in this country.

After shopping, we all went back to our flats to chill. Pookish and I decided to go out running in the Meadows. I am so out of shape it's not even funny. It took us 45 minutes to cover 2.5 miles! I can only hope that our regular running sessions become more productive soon. After running we were hungry, so we walked around looking for a place to eat. Peckham's (great organic/weird food shop) has a diner downstairs with student specials, so we split a za. While walking out, we ran into Barbara and she invited us to go out with her and some other GEPers.

Since I was all sweaty and gross, I decided to take a shower before heading out to Southsider's. By the time we finally got there, it was so full of Fresher's that our group had abandoned it in favor of Adrian's flat. But when Pookish and I arrived it was so crowded in the common area that you could barely more, so we talked some people into going to Brass Monkey with us.

After a few rounds of drinks and a shot or two, we migrated over to some Vodka place that had a ton of flavoured vodkas and many many cocktail specials. Pookish bought a vodka pass and got a free pair of knickers/pant/panties for it. We met a lot of the "older" girls and a few guys. Our stay there was rather short lived because the group wanted to meet up with the Safari super Freshers at Dropkick Murphys Bar. Pookish and I didn't stay there too long because it was overly crowded. Somehow, the rest of the crowd had enough energy to keep partying until 3 or 4 in the morning. I think I'm going to need to work on my party stamina if I want to keep up with these young'uns.

Dinner at Lindzie's

Fresher's week is a crazy week where the older students take the fresher's out on wild and crazy adventures. Tuesday was Safari night, but since we didn't have any safari attire and were not too sure about the "feed and water part" since vet students are well known for their drinking habits, we decided to have our own safari night, or "Farm Night". The idea came to use while sharing a few 'zas close to Lindzie's place. So after lunch we all trekked down to Lidyl's, and el-cheapo food place, to buy supplies for the evening. Dinner for five was about 12 pounds, and wine for five was a bit more. We all split up to shower and recover from all the walking and then headed over to Lindzie's at 7ish.


The evening began with some fine wine, lots of ComedyCentral podcasts, and Pookish attempting to burn down the place with really hot olive oil. Bout an hour later, dinner was served! Pasta, some nice sauce, veg, and shredded pork. Ha--mazing!













After we finished eating, we watched Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail. That movie never gets old, and get funnier with each viewing, mostly because you can quote more and more of it. Afterwards, we had some good old-fashioned shinanigans involving a cube, the other Alan/Poon/Canadia "killing" everyone, and Pookish trying to hide under the bed.












It was such a great evening and I hope that we have many more in the near future.

Animal Husbandry

Holy smokes! The past five weeks of school feel like they just flew by! Now we are in Fresher's Week and on Monday we start "real classes"... da dum dun... doom! I have to say that most of the classes were not all that interesting, but animal husbandry rocked!

The first one that I did was the milking parlor. We weren't allowed to bring in cameras, but I got some outside shots. We mostly talked and then spent an hour or so milking the cows. The hardest part was not getting splashed by all the pee and poo. Then we had to scrub down as thoroughly as possible. I never realized how hard it was to get cow poo off until two days later when I realized that my water-proofs still smelled because I had missed a few spots!










My next class was horse handling. Being the organized human being that I am, I naturally forgot the battery to my camera in the charger! However, I do have stories. We split up into four groups of one horsey person and three non-horsey people. My group ended up getting the twitchy TB-type dude. He was a little difficult to halter, but behaved so nicely for us! He even trotted up over and over and over again while we tried to assess his gait. Once everyone was comfortable handling the horses, we rotated through a few stations. The first was groom, blanket, and shave. Apparently the Brits and Scots are really into clipping and blanketing their horses. I also learned that I have been using my grooming brushes wrong for years and years! Interestingly, nothing bad ever happened because of it.... We then moved on the wrapping legs and tails. That was fun since the pony had a really thick tail with mud in it, so we couldn't take the bandage off properly. The last station was tacking up, but we ran out of time and didn't get to do it. Overall, the afternoon was a lot of fun and the weather was lovely.

A few weeks later it was our turn to learn how to handle sheep. Sheep are very interesting animals that tend to spaz out over just about anything that does not involved eating. It was a lot of fun trying to catch one to put it on its bum and trim its feet. You have to shove a bunch into the corner and then smoosh one and grab it by the chin before it has a chance to run away. To put it on its bum you have to turn it side ways, pull back on its head and lift its leg up while you step to the back and hopefully knock the sheep off its feet. It does not like to fall, but then it just sits there like a teddy bear.











The following stop a few days later was back at Langhill for some more cows. This time we had them in cow stocks and we learned how to look in their mouths, halter them, and pick up their feet. I think I was doing the mouth thing wrong at first because my cow started chewing on my boob; she left a great big drool spot on my waterproofs. The poor instructor walked up to see how we were doing just as I said "my boob was violated!" He turned bright red and became so flustered that he couldn't talk for a few minutes. Eventually he recovered and was able to show us how to do it properly. Since the cows were in stocks and we were mostly working with their front ends it was much easier to dodge the pee and poo.


Our last stop was back at OatC to play with the piggies. It did not smell nearly as bad as I thought it would until we had to go into the weaner house (and no, I did not see Myers there, hee hee). Then the smell of ammonia was so overwhelming we had to keep stepping outside for fresh air. Naturally, our favorite part was when we got to handle the babies. They were so cute! We had to shoo them into the front part of the sowing crate and trap them in their warm houses, then we reached in, grabbed one, held it, and gave it a vaccine. I was good at the picking them up part, but two times in a row I made a baby bleed with the vaccine so I just gave up on that. The instructor was not happy that I was making them bleed.



We then went into the weaner house to move a set of piggies from one room, into a weighing crate, and then into another room. It was so much fun since they kept smelling everything and licking invisible food off the floor. Once we got them through the weighing crate they were allowed to roam around for a bit while we got the rest through, and they were running around like little puppies. Then we put them in their new home and they started chewing on everything!
The last stop was the breeding shed were we met the breeding boars and the mama's to be. One of the boars could eat a small dog whole he was so big!












I don't know if we have any more animal husbandry this semester, but I can't wait until the winter holiday so that I can work with cows and pigs again! And then in the Easter holiday I get to do two weeks of lambing!