First week of Vet School

The first week at vet school has flown by and although it wasn't what I expected, I think it was better.

I can't get over or express how nice the years above have been in looking after us, getting us settled in and sharing stories.
When we were at the airport they sorted out taxi's for us, they've shown us cclassrooms, where to go for cheap printing/photocopying and every few hours on the UVM Facebook there's offers of books, notes and revision material being given away for various modules.
So many people have invited us in for a chat, brew, to give us notes on a memory stick - someone even gave me a set of laptop speakers for free so we can watch films 'cos they had 2 pairs!

It's strange going back to the classroom environment after a year out and lectures are all 2 hours but apart from having to get up for 7am lectures twice a week I'm enjoying it!

 Our Genetics lecturer is German so quite heavily accented and speaks quietly so we had to concentrate on hearing him as well as understanding what he was trying to get across but all other lecturers have been really good.

The Anatomy lecturer has great spoken English and really knows her subject so that was interesting and that lecture flew past - it helped that we have a 2 hour Anatomy practical straight after the lecture so it's all fresh in our minds and we can apply it to real bones etc and anything we didn't understand in the lecture we can recap in the practical.

We've put in for Exemptions in 3 subjects, Anatomy, Physiology and Immunology, as we covered those quite a lot in Animal Science - it basically means that we still go to all lectures, practicals and do mid-term Credit tests but instead of having 120 topics we'll be examined on in the Final Exam, we could have those cut down to a dozen topics that we'll be examined on.

The requests are submitted to professors/heads of department along with the syllabus from our previous modules and our results and can take a few weeks to hear back but here's hoping!

New arrivals

Sian and I walked to HyperTesco and I bought the Guppies a couple new additions; a plant, a Dwarf Gourami and a Catfish to keep their tank clean!

The walk was actually really nice, took about 25 minutes via a reservoir, along the train track and past a few fields so better than walking along boring streets!

I also spent a few hours this afternoon putting photos up around my room to make it a bit more homely...

Amazing week in Dubai

I've been in Dubai for a week with friends, Jack and George, and had an amazing time!

We found cheap flights a few weeks ago, via Bucharest on the way there and via Sofia, Bulgaria on the way back, so decided to book it and go!

The flights were £300 return - the Dubai to Sofia was only €20! - and the 4* hotel was £60 each for 6 nights so pretty good deal!

It was 41oC during the day so too hot to stay outside and even at night it didn't drop below 34oC at 3 or 4am!

The first day was a bit of a culture shock with the massive clear divide between wealth and poverty; 5 star gold and marble hotels next to falling down apartment blocks and exploitation of Indian workers doing manual labour in blazing sunshine...

But once we took if for what it was worth, a showy resort in what once was nothing but desert, it was amazing!

The Dubai Mall was like nothing I've seen even compared to New York and America - there's a 10 million litre aquarium, Sega World theme park and Ice rink just dotted around the mall! 

We did Burj Khalifa, the worlds tallest building, at 7pm on one of the evenings.

It was dark when we were up there but apparently you can see Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan during the day!

We went to Aquaventure waterpark on The Palms, man made islands, which was awesome! 

Some of the slides and the lazy river go through underwater tunnels through the shark tanks and you can see dolphin training as you queue for rides.

Food was amazing and actually quite cheap.

On the first night we went to Just Falafel and had Falafel panini, hummus (not in the photo), chips, extra falafel and a drink which cost about £4.00!

We went to my favourite The Cheesecake Factory TWICE but learnt after the first meal all we needed was starters (Mac 'n' Cheese balls) not mains, to leave room for cheesecake!