One month

It's so hard to believe that I have been living in Scotland for one month already!  Time sure has been flying fast and I have definitely fallen in love with this country.  Last week was freshers week (basically a Scottish excuse to get drunk) but it was fun nonetheless.  We had daily welcome lectures at the vet school and on Saturday night my roommates and I hosted a party for some of the other first years.  We had a BBQ and margaritas (I also made some pretty damn good guacamole) and about 25 people came over to hang out.  I have to say that it turned out really well and we knew a lot more people on our first day of class this past Monday.

Monday marked the first day of vet school.  It was pretty uneventful.  We started with an intro on study habits (probably more for the UK students) and then went into Biomolecular lectures on proteins.  It was pretty much review (no complaint here).  We then had some lectures on Animal Husbandry starting with basic info on livestock and grazing protocols and then a lecture on sheep.  The lecturer on sheep was super nice but would start out talking loud and then end up muttering so quietly that even though we were in the third row we could here him.  But suddenly he would yell again making us all jump.  Interesting information nonetheless as I don't know much about sheep.

Today we went to Cochno Farm for a lesson on cattle restraint.  We learned a lot about this with Dr. Ax at UofA, but we also learned how to cast cows.

Cochno Estate

How to cast a cow

Lastly, tonight we went to a Mountaineering club meeting and we will be hiking in the highlands in a couple of weeks.  The club meets each week at the Grosvenor Cafe (see earlier post) and has free wine :)  I also found out my long time friend Stacey will be coming to visit in October.  Can't wait!