When the Second Thing You Do on Clinics is...Vacation

Hi there; Birdie here!

I'm a little behind on blogging, since I'm now on my third rotation and just blogging about my second. I'll hopefully get a post up about this rotation later this week, but for now I'm going to write about my second two week block--vacation.

After my awesome oncology block, I had two weeks off--and no, I didn't use it to get a head start on VetPrep. I did a lot of reading, played some video games (especially with my little brother), but the reason I had this block as vacation is so I could travel. On March 5, I left for "Fabulous" Las Vegas. I was attending to recieve a leadership award, and part of the award was travel to the conference, including a stay at the Excalibur hotel. When I was scheduling my rotations (and, honestly, until about a week before the conference) I didn't know how much of the conference I needed to attend as an award recipient (it turned out to only be the first couple of days), and the whole 5-day conference was more than we're allowed to miss for any rotation.

Western Veterinary Conference is huge! When we first got access to the program, there were easily three speakers I was interested in at almost any time. Having gone to SAVMA symposium, though, I was used to that. What I wasn't expecting was the sheer size of it: three floors of the Mandalay Bay convention center, and an exhibit hall that just. kept. going. What first struck me when I walked in to the convention center (after far too long of wandering around and winding up at the shipping docks instead of the actual entrance, but that's another story...Google Maps does not know how to walk around Vegas) was that every advertisement on any wall or display was some veterinary product. That was when I knew that for 5 days, we veterinarians owned this place.

The exhibit hall was much bigger and fancier than at SAVMA--I guess when you're marketing to the people who can buy it on a large scale Right Now, you can pull out all the stops. There were a lot of companies offering surgical lights or kennels or other items distinctly for those in practice, but the same sorts of booths as at SAVMA were there too--just bigger. At least two different booths had espresso you could order (Hill's also had not-coffee; the hot chocolate with hazelnut was amazing and I wish I'd found it before the last day), and the "Gard Yard" (for NexGard) had a bucking flea you could ride, as well as T-shirts screen printed just for you in one of four designs. Some of the places saved their free backpacks or pillow pets for veterinarians, or even for those who made purchasing decisions for the practice. But I still wound up with a whole backpack (won in a plinko game from NutraMax) filled entirely with swag, including three free textbooks--one on nutrition, one on derm, and one differential guide. The huge hall was best traversed with another student, at least at first, when it felt like no one would want to talk to me since I'm still in school. But overall, it was definitely a great and memorable part of the conference.

Of course, the conference was way more than checking out new products and getting free swag in the exhibit hall. Being part of the small group of award winners who did so many things together, I got to know students at different vet schools and see some friends from other things I've gone to like VLE or the Fly-in. Several of us joiners who go around applying for things wind up attending a lot of the same things together. On Sunday night, we had a dinner meet-and-greet, and then several of us attended the Brian Regan show free at the conference. I've seen Brian Regan before, and some of his bits I could probably quote by heart, but he had some new stuff too and I enjoyed it. Plus, now the friends who went with me understand why I intentionally say "take luck" or refer to more than one box as "boxen." The next morning, after breakfast and introductions (in the form of introducing partners we'd been paired with the night before), we took a bus to the Oquendo Center, the hands on learning center WVC built. That place is awesome--we saw an ultrasound lab in progress, a rabbit anesthesia class with cadavers and live rabbits to intubate, the large animal area, and a surgery suite with rows of tables for vets to practice fracture repairs or other surgeries. They don't really offer anything for students (although there is a program for vet techs), but they do have a sort of introductory surgery basics class that I might be interested in taking when I start out. It's supposed to be an intensive weekend or so where you can get really comfortable and confident in surgery; I'm not sure how much surgery experience I'm going to get in clinics, but I'll definitely keep it in mind. On Tuesday, awards were presented at yet another breakfast and we took pictures--including one with the VLE 2014 alums who had won the award for our respective schools--there were a good number of us! Besides these award-recipient things, I also went to several lectures (maybe a dozen overall) on everything from service dogs to parvovirus to FLUTD to practice ownership.

Meeting people was one of the best parts of the conference. I got to hang out with friends from VLE and make new friends from other schools who recieved the same award. Some of us got drinks together and even went to the aquarium (rather small, but pretty cool--especially the "monsters of the deep" exhibit with preserved, dissected specimens from an eel to a penguin) on one of the last days. At a DVM students reception (which was kind of sparsely attended, though I found a good group to hang out with), I met a student from Australia who had come over with her dad, who is a veterinarian. I also networked with people in the exhibit hall. A leader at the company who made some of the equipment my summer research used has ties to Wisconsin and is helping me look for places to find an externship in the area.

I also attended the Lead with Your Strengths workshop with a Gallup strengths coach. It cost a bit extra (and will cost more when I get around to unlocking my full results...not thrilled about that) but I'm really glad I went. At first, it did not meet my expectations at all. When I took the quiz, I was expecting the one I had taken last year at authentichappiness.org, but this one was completely different. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing with positive statements, the test makes you choose between two statements that, often, aren't actually opposed at all. I got very annoyed with it, to be honest. It also has a time limit, theoreticaly, of 20 seconds per question...but I never hit that; I guess I read too fast. There were only 4 of us in the workshop, including me and Betsy Charles--I had really expected more. I learned a lot from it, but I struggled hard against it at the beginning. Part of it was because it didn't match my expectations at all, and part was because the "strengths" were not well defined (my "top 3" seem like facets of one thing, to me) and unlike at least two of the other three participants I never read the book or heard of these concepts before. It's an interesting concept, and I'd like to learn more about it. I'll have to actually read the book sometime. But I do feel like I got something out of our conversations, even if I still have a lot more to learn about this complicated system.

And the conference wasn't all I did in Vegas, either. I saw four different shows, besides Brian Regan. Le Reve (which I cannot pronounce right, the Canadian students assured me, but neither did the announcer at the show, so that's ok) at the Wynn was fantastic. It's similar to Cirque de Soleil but not the same company, and it takes place in a huge water stage. Different solid parts of the stage come up at different times, from the tree rising up for performers to dive off of to the multi-tiered fountain for the finale. There were acrobats, too, dropping in from high in the ceiling on silks or rings or swings. I'm so glad I got to see it. Apparently they change the show every six months, according to the hostess at dinner. You can't even see everything in one show just by seeing it once! For the rest, my dad joined me, meeting a friend of his in Vegas. He did the zipline downtown (I did not, becuase after making me leave and come back with a string for my glasses that didn't seem very secure anyway, they didn't have anywhere for me to leave my things--I don't know why they don't have lockers, they could make money off of that), though not the one where you go flat on your stomach. We had planned to do that one, but the time conflicted with our show, so we gave the tickets to a couple (who were just married...again! according to their T-shirts) as they went in to buy tickets. We saw two comedy magicians (Mac King and Adam London) and the musical Rock of Ages (which is a bit awkward to see with your dad, considering the major stripper subplot--not that you would know that from anything on their advertisements). I did my best to enjoy it anyway, and it was very well done, but...awkward. Although dinner that night, the buffet at the Rio, was easily the best meal of the trip.

So there you have it--definitely worth a post in itself, I'd say. Next time, I'll tell you about what it's like to work emergency for two weeks.

Welcome to Third Year!

Hi there; Birdie here!

Hello, readers, if I still have any readers left after several months of hiatus (or if I had any in the first place)! I am now one week into my third year of vet school, with only one semester + one month to go until I start clinics, which is both awesome and scary. I've already started looking for externships, and have one penciled in, but two other places I've talked to won't have dates for 2016 until September, so I have to wait a little while. For all of my classmates who didn't seek out the schedule and rules about externships during the summer, we're having our first meeting about phase II scheduling on Tuesday. I'm not really sure when we have to turn in our rankings for what rotations we want when...further updates as events warrant.

So far we've started Business Management, Equine, Critical Care, Surgery & Anesthesia (as in, the one where we actually do surgery), Clinical Skills lab, and small animal Medicine. Tomorrow we add Ophthalmology, too. And that's just in the first two weeks! I really value the business class, and I think what we're learning is important, but I don't care for the person teaching it or the way they present the material. I did rather enjoy putting my bright-orange-with-bronze-tips nails blatantly on the desk in front of my classmates when he said to stick to natural colored or no nail polish and "save the red for date night." Unfortunately, I had to take off that nail polish (which I'd just put on btw) that night for surgery lab the next day. I had my very first surgery lab on Tuesday, which left very little time for preparation. I was absolutely terrified during the last hour of class on Monday when they explained the high standards of Surgery. It was nowhere near as bad as I expected, though. We had typed up our procedure, and we taped it to the cabinets so we could have a reference. And we had at least three different clinicians come and talk us through various parts of the procedure. We did very little of the abdominal exploratory that was nominally the goal of the lab, but we did spay our cadaver dog. My lab partners each did an ovary and I took care of the uterine body. I have a bet with one of my lab partners about whether our surgery report will be acceptable or unacceptable (the only two grades on that scale). I think it will be unacceptable because he'll want us to edit it so that we can know exactly how to do it right before the individual reports from  our live surgeries which are actually graded--but we'll see. We also had lab for Equine, but it wasn't anything exciting this week. Well, there was a live horse, which would be more exciting if I still didn't have riding lessons; but I did, the day before. We did learn how to tie several knots, though: a tail tie, bowline, clover hitch, and their version of a halter tie. Maybe later labs will be more exciting.

Our schedule is pretty weird this semester. We picked groups for surgery, which also apply for Equine lab and now for Clinical Skills (it originally wasn't, but that teacher changed it). The groups rotate such that on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, only some of us have class at given times (after the first 2 hours). Some days I don't have class after 10 am! I'm trying a new way of organizing my agenda this year to keep up with stuff especially in those blank spaces where I don't have class: basically as a weekly to-do list, color-coded for when things are due.

This was the first weekend of the school year, which means Homes for Hounds and the year's first Spay Day. On Friday, I went to the Christian Veterinary Fellowship ice cream social. We had an interesting talk about what "born again" means--I'm still not really sure what to make of it. I'm on their email list now, so I guess I'm part of CVF. I had most of the same team for Homes for Hounds this year, with one switch. I got there early, but went back home for last year's apron when I learned they didn't have enough this year for everyone. In the meantime, two of my group members worked on assembling the doghouse, which turned out to be defective--as I understand it, the holes on the front piece didn't line up right. And my third group member was stuck in huge storms as she drove back, so she got there about 2 hours late. All of which means we had a lot of disadvantages, and it didn't help that I 1) put rather a lot of detail into my drawing and 2) was the only one drawing (last year Brooke did one side). We finished most of the painting in the last 30 minutes, and we had to ignore some of the detail and just paint over it, but honestly I'm super proud that we finished at all. It didn't look as good as it could have, but we had an awesome concept and we got it across--and we actually had paint on all of it, which I consider a win!

The front of our Home for Hounds this year

It's Mardi Gras themed! Every dog on the float is a different breed, but they all had to be brown silhouettes because we ran out of time.

Note that the dogs on this float are wearing cat masks.

Spay Day today was INSANE. We did 237 cats--more than ever before, and the rescue group has agreed we won't do that many again! Luckily we also had a ton of people show up to help! I started out working anesthesia, as I typically do. But now I'm a third year--and I got to go to the neuter table! First I watched a classmate, who had been on the table longer, remove one testicle, and then I did the other one under her direction. I was offered to have someone observe and talk me through my next cat, but I spent 3 Sundays this summer at the shelter near the airport working on high volume neuters (and two spays, even! Well, like half a spay and 3/4 of a spay) where I learned very nearly the same procedure, so I felt like I had it under control. I felt really cool signing my name for the neuters and when first years helping out called me ma'am and assumed I know what I'm doing. Nine and a half of the cats that got neutered are thanks to me! I also got to meet a bunch of the first years, which was fun. But all in all, we didn't get out until 5...and we started at 8, so that's a long day!

Before I sign off, I just want to say a little about how I spent my summer. My research project was more complicated than we expected--my mentors kept adding comparisons, the machine we were supposed to be validating gave us trouble, and the part we expected to finish in 2 weeks still isn't done because unlike in the previous study (where they did finish in a few weeks), we needed a day between each dog to sterilize the only two transducers we had. Despite the fact that research is ongoing (and I might be able to help some in my blank spaces of no lab, depending on when they're working on it), I was able to spend a week at home before school started, which was nice. Before that, though, I presented my research on a poster at the summer scholars symposium. This year, it was at UC Davis; they apologized for the heat but it was perfect, nice weather to me, especially compared to Louisiana! The symposium itself wasn't much fun. I did like presenting my poster (and owning my landing, where I was the only poster presented at that time between two sets of stairs and a doorway). But other than that, they basically never stopped talking at us! I really disliked how on the first night, at a wine-and-appetizers thing set up like a meet-and-greet (you know, to meet all the people from other schools who are also presenting, as makes sense) they had several people talk at us for five minutes each while a lady went around SHHHH!ing anyone who dared to talk. I could see them giving a welcome talk, but it needed to take less than an hour and/or be set up as a thing where we listen to speakers instead of a thing where we meet the students from other schools.

The unofficial parts were great, though. Our LSU contingient hung out every night, whether at a picnic table near the not-meet-and-greet, in the common room of the dorm where we were staying, or out at the bars downtown. And one morning a handful of us skipped the first set of lectures to have a crepe brunch and walk around downtown Davis. We went to the farmers' market that happened to be across the street from our crepe place, stopped at a store to buy Davis T shirts (and I got olive oil for my mentors as a thank you gift--apparently Davis olive oil is a thing, or at least trying to be), and petted a bunch of dogs because so many people brought their dogs out. That was probably my favorite part of the trip. I wasn't sure during parts of the summer, especially when we were having so much trouble with everything, but I think I'm glad I did the research. Especially if I get a publication or two out of it! I'm also relieved that even though the project isn't finished, I don't have any real committment to work on it beyond the summer. I spent a lot of the summer worrying about how I'd manage to work on it while in school, and I'm glad to learn I didn't have to worry.

Progress, I suppose

Hi there; Birdie here!

This week has been intense, but I can't really say it's over because I still need to catch up on lectures. First I went to DC, which--more on that later, but it was pretty stressful. Then I came back and didn't even have time to unpack because I had to study for my derm final makeup yesterday and my orthopedics final today. And then yesterday I found out that I got the Banfield summer job program--AND I got summer scholars. So in the midst of my exams I had to deal with that decision. I wound up deciding on summer scholars, since I don't have any research experience and unfortunately despite being in vet school I am still forever trying to make myself look good for the next application. Also my housing in Texas near the Banfield hospital fell through. I made the calls/emails to make that decision official this morning. And I've still got about 7 hours of lecture I hope to get through this weekend, which isn't counting the studying I need to do for next week's exams. Vet school's tough.

I'm actually pretty upset, because even though our classes are usually recorded (which I was counting on, being gone for two days) a certain farm animal clinician decided that not enough people were in class and didn't record. One of my classmates gave me her notes, but I'm not super comfortable with that; I'd rather hear it myself. I'm going to be missing his class for Symposium, too...this time I'll make sure to ask him beforehand in the hopes he won't decide not to record.

DC was...honestly, not what I was expecting. When it talked about "exposing veterinary students to the legislative process" I didn't know that meant making up lobbyists and setting up meetings for us with congress members' offices. The first night was good. We had a little reception to talk with other participants (one of my VLE groupmates was there!), and then a bunch of us went out to a place called the Beer (Bier?) Baron, where I got funnel cake burger sliders and another guy in the group got a chicken Parmesan donut. It was really cold! As we were walking back, everything was encased in ice. It was also raining earlier that day when I was walking to the hotel from the metro station. I actually took the metro station the wrong way for 2 stops, but I wound up on the same train I would have have to wait for, so I consider it a win--I waited in warm trains instead of on a cold platform.

The second day (first full day) was when the problem started. After several talks (we even had powerpoint printouts, just like vet school lectures), we had some mock meetings. The first couple of people who went up made me cringe. First, there was a large group that gave me so much secondhand embarrassment because no one seemed to know what to say and the person playing the senator had to keep feeding them lines. Then the next person was quite good, except that she kept saying things that were probably jokes but were just so very "no, don't do that!" So I figured, I have some idea what I'm doing, I'll go up. So I did. And I completely messed up which bill is which (we were presenting two bills: the Veterinary Medical Loan Repayment Program Enhancement Act and proposals for reauthorization of the Higher Education Act). I did my best to keep going anyway, and I probably wasn't the only one who would do that, but I felt horrible. It was not easy, it was not fun, and it did not make me feel good about messing up in front of actual congressmen (or their staff) the next day. No matter how much I wanted to bow out and fly home, though, I couldn't get out of it. I think they thought they needed me, although after my meetings I'm not sure why. I don't think I made any difference whatsoever: either they already supported our position or they brushed me off without listening. I met with one senator and two representatives--well, I met with their offices. Overall, I don't really know how to feel about it. It's a worthwhile experience and I'm sure it will look good on my resume, but I'm not sure it was a good experience for me.

The surgery wetlab a couple of weeks ago was a better experience, but that wasn't what I was expecting either. Basically, since literally none of us had sufficient background, we spent the wetlab learning to suture and do ligatures. At the end one of the groups got to do the neuter on their dog, but that's about it. Still, it might have actually been better, since literally everyone got to have hands-on personally instructed experience. I mean, the group that did the neuter, it was just 2 people who got to do it, I'm not sure what they would have done with the groups of 3-4 we had. And I feel like I learned a lot about spay/neuter procedures from the lecture beforehand. Either way, it's giving me a great leg up in our current surgery class. We had lectures on suture patterns and on instruments this week, and I have a good basis for that right now. We also had our first microscope wetlab for path club, and finally had a meeting and officer elections. I wasn't able to be there (it was Tuesday, while I was in DC), but I kept my vice-presidency.

At my riding lesson last week, I got to ride Sailor, my favorite! I think we did well together, and my instructor said I "managed him well. He gets a little excited." I also worked on my position, especially over jumps. The ring was super crowded, though, which I didn't appreciate. Naturally I didn't ride this week since I had so much in the way of tests (and summer decisions) to deal with, but actually there weren't lessons at the end of this weeks so I get to make it up on Monday and ride twice next week.

On the book front, I finished Tam Lin and was pretty disappointed in it. In the hopes of reading something I'd like better than my last few books, I got a short story collection called 21 Proms that has a John Green story in it (kind of hoping it would be like My True Love Gave to Me, a recent Christmas short story collection I loved). Well, the John Green story was alright, but I didn't like any of the others. I didn't relate to the characters, and some of them were just plain weird. On my flights/in DC, I read Top Dog by Jerry Jay Carroll for a book I own but hadn't read.  It's the best one I've read in a while, which isn't saying much. I liked the battle between good and evil, and some of the symbolism, but as a whole I didn't care for the narrator's tone and I wasn't entirely satisfied with the ending. Now I'm reading Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan. I've read nearly 200 pages just today (mostly just after I got home), so that's pretty good. I firmly dislike certain characters and situations, though. I need to find some better books, or I'll forget why I love reading (no I won't, I'll never do that).

I just got back from going to the gymnastics meet with A. It was senior night--the seniors' last meet. We got there a little late, after the first event had started. There were like three 10.0s this time--there weren't any last time! The star floor performer had her routine last, with music that included Stand Up and Get Crunk (a Saints pump-up song) and I'm pretty sure the LSU fight song too. She got a 10.0 for it, and she totally deserved it. Anyway, it was really fun and totally not catching up on lectures like I should have been doing.

Today I also started my feeding shift. The co-chair on duty right now is actually my li'l sib, and I caught him in the feed room when I went in before my test. He showed me and another feeder how to put on jesses (like a bird leash), and when I came back after the exam I jessed Lucy as well as feeding her. I have to say, it felt pretty cool to just walk around with a bird on my fist, nbd. I'm meeting him again in the morning to help stretch an owl that the wildlife hospital got in.

Next week I've got a farm animal exam (on less than 7 lectures this time, because that makes sense...I really don't like that class) and a cardio final, and the week after that it's Symposium. After this week, I really hope things get better (though I can't really see them getting worse, knock on wood).

Where does the time go?

Hi there; Birdie here!

How is it already Monday again? Last week I didn't have classes Monday or Tuesday, so Friday came up really quickly. I hope that neuro test turned out okay--we should be getting it back today. I'm pretty sure I passed, but I'm not sure whether I kept my grade up. And I've hardly been home at all this weekend. On Saturday I went to the Dream Clinic. Luckily no one busted their heads open this time! And afterwards I studied with a couple of my classmates until midnight for our diagnostic imaging exam. Then Sunday I went to mass, got home and hurriedly ate lunch, then headed out again for our first Pathfinder session. It was really fun, although I'm kind of disliking the whole premade setting thing. The DM really should have just not allowed me to be a Vishkanya if literally everyone else in the setting is the ~6 basic races. Seriously, everyone--he has numbers/percentages. A couple of funny highlights: the druid's companion, a velociraptor, won the balance competition (the village decided it didn't count and picked the human runner-up, but baby velociraptors  aren't very intelligent so he thought they were cheering for him), and the fighter and paladin kept trying to Diplomacy people and when that failed Intimidate them. Towards the end they started skipping the first bit. And after that, guess what--more studying until the late night/early morning with the group. I got a lot out of it, but tonight I think I need to study on my own so I can focus on what's going to be on the exam and not understanding (more complicated) clinical stuff.

We also had our first diagnostic imaging club wetlab this past week. Looking over thorax cases. It would have been nice if we could have had abdominal rads, since that's what's on the exam! It was cool, though. Not enough people showed up to do the competition, but that just means everyone won. All of us who showed up are going to get laser pointers in different colors! That way next time we can each point out what we're talking about on the projection.

Colorado was fun. We read half of the Lightning Thief book, and I skiied with dad three days. I didn't get to go ice skating or even get my blades sharpened, though. I left them in the shop the second day, and when I went to pick them up a couple of days later so I could skate, the rink was being torn up or something, the store was closed, and the blades hadn't been sharpened (luckily I hadn't paid already). At least I got them back! Baton Rouge airport was the worst pain though. First my original flight out (to Houston, where I would meet up with my family) got delayed so I almost missed them. Then coming back...well, really it was Denver coming back. My original first flight got delayed 3 hours. I got on a different flight to Houston eventually but still missed my connection, and couldn't get off standby for the next two flights to Baton Rouge. I stayed up all night in the airport (studying neuro, of course) and missed the first two hours of class on Wednesday. One was intro to vet med, so not something I need to study, but I still need to listen to the hour of renal physiology I missed. Hopefully it was recorded!

If you're an SDNer reading this, don't worry, I'll get to the BTotW soon. I just wanted to get my weekly update done first. :) I couldn't skip the topic I came up with!

Goodbye snow, back to vet school

Hi there; Birdie here!

Yes, I am writing this at 4 am. I'm currently at the Houston airport thanks to a 3 hour delay on my originally planned flight and no seats on my backup, so I'll have to miss at least the first hour of class tomorrow. I can't quite decide whether I'm lucky or not--that first hour is Intro to Vet Med, so it's not something I need to learn for an exam, but it is the one class where attendance is mandatory. Oh well, it's not like I'd planned to skip a different two sessions (we can miss two and still pass the pass/fail course).

The break was really nice. We read half of the first Percy Jackson book, and it turned into a family affair--my brother was somewhat reluctant at first, but my parents liked it so I read "to them" with him in the room for a chapter or two until he wanted to listen of his own accord. I also got to do some skiing for the first time in 8 years. My dad and I skied together, and one day we had a lesson, so I learned how to ski like an adult! Last time I took ski lessons I'm pretty sure they told me about pizza (wedge) and french fries (straight skis). At any rate, I took all of my turns with my skis pointed together, but I can do better now! I didn't get to go ice skating, since they were tearing up the rink for some reason yesterday when I left, but it was still a good trip. And I really liked playing and hanging out with my family instead of studying! Don't worry, I finished my neuro review questions before I started typing this. ;)

Since I have the time now and nothing better to do while I wait for my flight to be somewhat closer (it wasn't worth getting a hotel and trying to sleep since the full flight was at 11 and my next flight leaves at 7, which would mean leaving at 5 to get through security--throw in the trouble of finding a hotel and it comes up to Not Worth It), I thought I would write about the current Blog Topic of the Week. This week's suggestion: Your favorite thing about vet school.

There's a lot of things I don't like about vet school sometimes, but what I like best is when I remember exactly why I'm here. That means when I actually get to do things, which pretty much translates to wetlabs! Don't get me wrong, I do like doing the Spay Days and Dream Clinic, but I either feel a bit overwhelmed (at the Dream Clinic I'm the doctor, and I've never really been taught how to do a physical exam!) or like it's more tech work than vet work (I did a lot of surgery prep in my pre-vet experience). Club wetlabs are just the right amount of challenge, where I get to learn (be taught) actual hands-on stuff I'll use in practice (or at least on clinical rotations). I've done ultrasounds, "mass" aspirations and blood smears, and CSF taps. I'm actually keeping a spreadsheet of my experience...pre-vet habits, but it also helps to have it to look back to. Even the clin path wetlab I did last semester was awesome--I didn't know much, but the way it was taught, with the clinicians asking us questions...well, it would have made me feel more like a real doctor if I actually knew the answers to any of the questions. But still, it was real cases! Actually, clubs in general are pretty great. See: last week's surgery meeting, where a local practitioner talked about his work and showed videos of a couple of surgeries. In conclusion, the best parts of vet school are the parts that are more vet but still school, as they teach me how to properly do things I will one day do on my patients. :)

Anywhere in the world...

Hi there; Birdie here!

So the pre-vet forum at SDN--which is one of the reasons I started a blog in the first place--has started a Blog Topic of the Week thread. The question I'm answering is not vet school-related at all: "If you could go on vacation anywhere in the world, where would you go? What would you do while there (activities, attractions, food, etc)?" Instead of a hypothetical, though, I'm going to talk about an actual dream trip that I got to go on.

For my graduation present, I really wanted to go to Thailand with my dad, and I'm so grateful he made that happen! In fact, we didn't only visit Thailand--we went several places in Japan and to Cambodia as well as a stopover in Seoul. I call it our Asiadventure. It was 10 cities in two weeks, and it was amazing! Since it was so long and we did so much stuff, I'm going to only talk about Japan in this post. Maybe next time I'm procrastinating studying I'll add another post about it!

I'm going to tell this story in mostly pictures, largely because of how long it would be if I didn't...

Our first stop was Fukuoka, Japan. It's not necessarily a major tourist destination, and I don't exactly think its one of the Japanese cities everyone knows. But it's the city where two of my friends did study abroad, and I wanted to do some of the things they did!

Dancing fountain show the first night, in the mall our hotel was basically attached to.

 This type of gate means behind it is a Shinto shrine. This one was Daizeifu Shrine, in honor of a scholar.

 His family had a tie to plum blossoms, so they were all over the place. No, I don't know what the sign says; I don't know nearly enough kanji for that.

Here's a picture of the shrine...one of many temples in our visit.

 Neko Cafe (cat cafe)! It's a restaurant/coffeeshop type deal, and they have a bunch of cats hanging around. They have toys for you to play with them, and my dad and I even got to feed them some treats!

 So you can have some idea how many cats there were...but there were more. They swarmed around us when we had food for them! They were quite polite about our lunches though.

See the fish swimming around in there? This is a restaurant called Zauo, and you catch your own fish from here and they prepare it for you! I got a tempura flounder, and dad got red snapper sashimi. It was really good, and super fresh of course!

Not pictured: using my Japanese skills to get Iced Cocoa (which tasted rather like YooHoo) out of a vending machine instead of all the coffee drinks I didn't want. Yay for reading katakana!

Our next destination in Japan was Hiroshima. Looking around there at all the monuments and museum and everywhere a call for peace, I thought that world leaders should all need to visit here when they get elected/chosen however. We were here for less than a day, perusing all this before moving on.

 The A-Bomb Dome: the only structure left standing in the area after the bombing.

 Paper cranes: it's said that if you fold 1,000 of them, your wish will come true. Children in Japan fold them, wishing for peace, for this monument, in memory of Sadako, an athletic little girl who died of leukemia from prenatal radiation.

 This is the children's bell. There are apparently always school trips, where the children come out to the children's monument and do a little ritual/ceremony/song for peace. The top of the bell where it hits to make noise looks like another folded crane.

Line of monuments; they're all set in a line, so if you look through that arch at the end you can see all of them.

Shinkansen! The bullet train we took between different cities in Japan.

Not pictured: We had Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, with layers of batter, cabbage, bean sprouts, meat, noodles, and egg. There is also Osaka style, where everything is mixed up together.

The next stop was Osaka. If you're an anime fan/have watched Azumanga Daioh, you'll recognize the name of where one of the characters came from. They're known for a distinctive way of talking, great comedy, and being major extroverts.

 Osaka Castle, where I learned about Hideyoshi. He was a clever guy who flooded castles and had a gold tea set, but when he died with no sons of ruling age there was a Summer War due to the traitor among the five who had promised to carry on his line.

 The main keep is on its 3rd or 4th iteration. The first was black lacquer, but the rest are white plaster.

 These little guys are on a lot of historic buildings. They're supposed to guard from fire, but they don't work too well.

 Dotonbori, the massive shopping district.

IIRC, this picture was taken from the "seduction bridge." The Japanese term literally means fishing; it's where guys fish for single girls, apparently.

Kyoto was the next city we visited, and this area was my personal favorite. There were so many cool things to see and do here! 

 Famous zen garden at Ryoanji temple

 This was the moss garden, which I thought was even nicer than the rocky zen garden.

 The whole grounds of Ryoanji temple were beautiful. I really like this picture, so I'm throwing it in here.

 The Golden Pavilion! Built by the magistrate who betrayed Hideyoshi; the whole outside is covered with gold foil 0.2 microns thick. I have a scroll of it hanging in my room at school that I got from the gift shop.

 This is another picture from the Golden Pavilion area, and another one I just like a lot. This one I blew up and framed in the guest room at my parents' house.

I didn't take these picture, but these are a signature sweet of Kyoto. I called them "Kyoto triangles," but googling to find this picture tells me they're actually called yatsuhashi. They're steamed mochi (soft rice dough) surrounding a sweet red bean paste, although there were other flavors that we saw later on. These are really good!

 Nishiki food market! I was really excited about getting to see all the foods I wouldn't even know what they were, and it did not disappoint.

 A lot of restaurants used plastic food like this to advertise; the practice started in Osaka.

A very old traditional Japanese shop.

 Shogun's private quarters at Nijo Castle (actually, this is probably the more public part--I don't think we could take pictures in the actual private quarters).

 Nijo Castle is famous for its Nightingale Floor--it's purposely squeaky in the rooms for receiving former enemies, so you know if they're sneaking up behind you!

 Japanese gardens have 3 elements: water, trees, and rocks. Rocks are most important since they don't change, so they worked very hard to find the perfect rock to be a bridge here.

Kiyomizu temple ("pure water temple") is dedicated to making wishes come true. Pictured here is the purification ritual, which we encountered in many Japanese temples: wash left hand, then right hand, rinse the mouth using your left hand, then pour the rest over the handle.

Not pictured: The delicious skewers we had at a restaurant that does lunch for salarymen. The miso soup was really good, and there were about 6 skewers with chicken and different sauces, which were all delicious. We also had Kobe beef at a fancy teppanyaki place with a yummy salty "baked" potato traingle and orange ice cream

Nara was basically a day trip from Kyoto, and I'm including it with Kyoto as my favorite part of the trip. It was the ancient capital of Japan in the 700s.

 In Nara park, the deer are so used to people they'll come right up to you! They sell packets of crackers you can feed them (which we did, twice). There was even one deer lying on the ground who let me sit next to him and pet him! His antlers were all velvety-soft.

 The (supposedly) largest Bhudda, at Todaiji Temple. He had four guards (more figures), one for each direction.

 Kasuga Taisha Shrine, with all these stone lanterns. Some had wood (even a stump that looked like it had been cut out of a tree and placed there) as a box for the light in the lantern. There were many young babies and a wedding here: Shintoism is for your happiness (in the present), so they have a baptism-like ritual there, while Bhuddism is for your ancestors/place in heaven.

 As we drove, we happened upon this festival! I got to eat a taiyaki (fried pastry in the shape of a fish, filled with sweet red bean paste), which is one of the best things I ate while there. Also I got a kimono!

 I recognized this game at the festival because we played it in the Japanese language club in undergrad. You use a hook on the end of a paper to try and pick up the balloon toys by a loop in a long rubber band stretching from the end without the hook breaking off (which it will if the paper gets wet). Then the balloon is like a yo-yo!

 We spent just one night at the ryokan, a traditional Japanese Inn.

 I took a bath in this tub at the ryokan.

 They lent us clothes to relax in (we wore them to dinner and referred to them as our "dinner uniforms") as well as the pink pajamas. Dinner had 9 courses--super fancy!--and the best thing was the iris cake, which was shaped like a little plum with an edible gold leaf and was made out of purple and yellow sweet potatoes.

 Zen garden at the ryokan

You can see the different little buildings people stay in

Not pictured: the little hard candies our fantastic driver Ozaki-san kept putting in the back for us since we had long drives (the peach ones were my favorite), and a tea ceremony with jelly cake type things and ginger chips. It was at Hakusason-so, an artist's former residence. We got prints of the artists work, too! Mine has a gray horse on a pale gold background, and dad got a ship that's supposed to bring in money.

Final stop in Japan was the current capital: Tokyo!

 Megane bridge, so called because with the reflection it looks like glasses

 Wedding (I think) procession at the Shinto shrine

 The big main street of Harajuku, Tokyo's youthful fashion district

 This is the sort of thing you see in Harajuku. Also cosplay outfits for sale!

 The Akihabara region started with electronics and gained more Japanese nerdiness

 We visited the Pokemon Center to get a bunch of stuff for my little brother

e We weren't in time to get a reservation to see the tuna auction, but we still got to see Tsukiji fish market. These things were all over the place, and frequently come close to running people over. You have to watch out for them!

 Look at all the fish! Also octopus.

 Giant tuna--this is how big a tuna is.

 This is what wasabi looks like when it's not already paste.

The last thing we did in Japan was a cooking lesson. We went to our sensei's house, and we were expecting just one sushi roll each or something, but instead we had a feast! We chopped things and cooked things and washed things and rolled sushi, and we also got red snapper (a fish for special occasions, according to our sensei), sesame-cooked carrot and burdock, miso soup, and a mess of tempura including leaves that she referred to as Japanese basil. I also tried on a kimono (the obi felt a bit like a corset) and then we had an impromptu tea ceremony with green tea mochi filled with red bean and a pastry with white filling that's apparently famous. When you drink ceremonial green tea, you turn the cup because you're not supposed to drink from its front.

Oh, actually that wasn't the last thing--we finished off with a visit to a maid cafe, but we couldn't take pictures inside. It was called @home, and when you enter they greet you with おかえり ("welcome home"/"welcome back." It was super cute. We got magic shaker drinks that involved saying things along with the maids. We got "lvl. 1 master" membership cards, and I wrote my name on mine in katakana.

Not pictured: Japanese breakfast pastries from the shinkansen station: I got a sweet bread thing (the milk version; there was the same thing next to it and then the milk version), dad got a super cheese pastry, and we split a bacon and egg pastry. I was really proud of how I was able to read enough to figure out what we wanted, and everything was yummy! Also, we got black sesame and chestnut flavored soft serve on the walk on the way to the Bhuddist temple. There was a lot of great food in Tokyo...we had shabu shabu and sukiyaki and a number of yummy fried things on sticks with different sauces.

Also worth noting is the Japanese breakfast (which we had several times throughout the trip, even when we could have had a more usual breakfast. Adventure, remember?). It involves things like soup (which is sipped, not eaten with a spoon), fish, rice, and tamagoyaki (a sweet egg custard sort of thing). Unfortunately I don't think we ever remembered to take any pictures of it...

We did all that stuff in one week! Hopefully that's enough pictures for you to enjoy visiting Japan vicariously on my wings ;)