Its 3:21am and I'm sitting at the Farm...

When a butterfly flaps its wings in China, a horse in Grenada colics...

Its the middle of the night. On a Saturday night. We can hear the music bumping over at Banana's and my Large Animal Critical Care team is on the 2am-4am shift monitoring a horse on fluids at the University's Large Animal Facility. Not much is happening, which is nice.

We have midterms coming up not this week but the following. 5 exams in 5 days. All comprehensive, with 2 of the 5 being the first exams in those classes... Should make for a couple sleepless nights.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get back on here soon and post some new pictures and some more updates!

Three Months Later

... Like Ferris Bueller says "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

In the last three months, I've finished 5th term, applied for 4th year schools, headed to the US for winter break, been accepted to my 4th year school and now I'm heading back down to Grenada to finish living the dream.

5th term was probably the busiest, most stressful semester so far in vet school, but somehow was one of the funnest and most exciting. There was ALWAYS something to do or something to study... And in the rare moment of breathing time, there was always something you *could* do! This last term in Grenada is likely to FLY BY, but hopefully it will settle/slow down pretty quickly.

I found out recently that I will be heading to Louisiana State University for my 4th year studies!! GEAUX TIGERS!! Pretty excited about that as I will be joined there by two of my room mates and another of our closest friends. That new chapter of my life starts in June of this year. And already I'm finding out about all sorts of friends and family that claim to have "connections" at LSU... We will see if some of these can come through and hopefully I will be able to find a place to live there with people as awesome as the ones that I have been with the past 3 years now!

Since arriving in the US for winter break, I've been doing a lot of work, family, friends and hunting. I've been very fortunate to get to go hunting with some of my best friends and with some of the guys that have tried to teach me everything they know in the past. For my money there is still nothing better than seeing the sunrise from a pit blind in the middle of a field on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. No matter where I go or what I see in life, that will continue to be my happy place.

Recharged and ready, I'm headed to my last term on the ROCK with the light at the end of the tunnel in view, fully knowing that the light is an oncoming train in the form of my clinical year!!

I promise to visit more often then leave for a month...

So it seems that I finished the last post saying that I was going to try to visit more often, then I go and disappear for a month... Yeah... My bad on that. I swear I posted something two weeks ago, but it seems to not have made it up here...

Anyways, this is a pretty busy week. Midterm week = midterm weak!! I realize that from now on most of my posts will mention me being busy or something about how busy its been down here, so I might just leave that as a given.

We found out that our vet school was granted an Official Visit by the AVMA COE, the group that accredits vet schools in the US. It would be a HUGE deal if we were able to secure their approval. We have made a lot of progress since the last time they visited and we have a student body and faculty that is ready to do what is needed to make it happen! Luckily, everyone realizes the *massive* and immediate impact the accreditation would have for us, so it will hopefully unite everyone in a common goal. So needless to say, I'm pretty excited for this coming April, but I acknowledge that the real work is truly about to begin!

The University football team, which I play on, starts the big national tournament a week from tomorrow. For a group of guys that practice once a week, we have a pretty decent shot of doing well and making it pretty deep into the tournament. But its tough against the local 'professional' teams, with them getting to play a regular season and practice during the week, while we have basically taken two weeks off for exams! And in a 36 team bracket, we of course drew the #2 team in the Grenadian Premiere League, with a possible second round match-up with the team the won the tournament last spring!! Looks like we kind of have the odds stacked against us... But no matter, underdogs aren't automatically out of it!

Should be a couple fun weeks. Will let y'all know how it turns out!

My Last Month Would Make a Bee Look Lazy!

Between the travel and the start of classes, its been quite a month!

Made it down to school on the island of Grenada safe and sound with no delays or issues. Got back to an amazingly spotless house. I can't say enough about how much I appreciate my landlords here! Its not that I left my part of the house in total shambles... but lets just say that after a week of final exams with the last one ending ~12 hours before my departure flight took off, not 'a lot' of cleaning got done.Classes and club stuff started up very quickly the day after I landed and have all been rolling since! We also found out that the University had decided to put an end to the use of pigs in our Junior Surgery and Anesthesia Lab... Which is fine even though we made amazingly proficient and prolific use of the pigs, but it bumped our first surgical experience up two weeks and made our first surgical patient someone's pet... Which definitely served to take the adrenaline up a few notches last week!
Speaking of that we did our first surgery of veterinary school last week!! It was just a simple neuter but with it being the first patient where the care fell squarely on our shoulders... we were prepared like we were going in for a much more invasive and involved procedure. Everything went really well through the surgery and we even had the chance to have the visiting veterinary dentist come in and remove the little dog's deciduous teeth. He recovered perfectly and we sent him home happy, healthy and without the ability to make and more unwanted puppies to roam the island as strays.
The next couple weeks should be just about as busy as the past few. We keep doing surgery about every ten days for the rest of the semester and we are also kicking off a lunchtime lecture series through our local chapter of the Student Affiliate of the American Veterinary Medical Association to highlight all the varied veterinary experiences that our students have while they are here at SGU. So there have been a couple of us working very hard behind the scenes to get that program rolling and off the ground. The first lecture is in two weeks, so hopefully we provide funding by then or else it will be a lunchtime lecture without lunch!!

Well, I hope everything is going well for anyone that still happens to be readying this blog. Shoot me an e-mail let me know what you're up to!! I promise to update more often!

All Packed Again...

So I have managed to fit 4 months of my life into one 50-pound suitcase again... Still think that I have too much stuff!

Its off to Grenada tomorrow bright and early. More to come upon arrival there!

Perpetual Motion

Ok. Finally settled into the AVMA Convention in Atlanta. It should be a pretty busy time here. I've already missed a couple of the things that I wanted to see, but there are still plenty more to come.

I'm amazed to see so many of my colleagues from SGU here at the convention. People seem to be coming out of the woodwork.

But as seems to be my traveling luck recently... I showed up to the airport after driving 2 hours from the beach, only to find out (at check-in) that my flight was... the next day. D'oh.

Once I managed to arrive on the correct day, things went much smoother.

Atlanta is hot. Humid and hot. I've been in Africa for the balance of this summer and this place still feels hot...

Ok... off to dinner.

Home! Sort of...

Whew... Made it.

So after spending last Friday morning in the field, Friday afternoon driving to Kisumu to catch a short flight to Nairobi, and Friday evening flying from Nairobi to London Heathrow, I finally hit some travel snags...

Knowing that I only had two hours between my arrival at Heathrow and my departure for JFK, I had to hustle from the HUGE British Airways terminal to the equally huge international terminal. After catching the tram and arriving at terminal 3, I checked the boards to see which gate I needed to head to so I could board... Then I saw it: "American Airlines 115- CANCELLED" Uhoh... Looked at the rest of the board... Saw something promising- "American Airlines 215 New York(JFK) @ 11:30" Great! Ran over to the ticket counter to rebook.

Little did I know... Apparently, schools in the UK had just gone on summer holidays the previous day... so every flight was booked/overbooked! And the 1130 flight to JFK was no exception! (nor was the American Air flight from the previous night that was overbooked by 10 people all of whom were then put on stand-by for my flight that was canceled!). So... after reviewing several contingency flight plans that would at least get me to somewhere in the US, we tried a couple different options:
1)Stand-by on the 1130 flight to JFK. While it would have gotten me in too late to make my connection to Baltimore, I figured I could just take a train home from there. Well again this was not to be... The flight was overbooked by probably 10 people, plus the people who were on stand-by already from the previous evening's flight, plus the people who were there from my flight... When they closed the jetway doors, there were still about 50 people standing at the gate... Some were less than happy about the prospect of missing the flight...
2) Heathrow --> Edinburgh --> Newark --> Baltimore... Close but the guy standing next to me booked the last seat from Edinburgh...
3) Heathrow --> Chicago --> Baltimore... Great! But... couldn't get confirmation on the flight from Chi-town to Baltimore... So we decided to pass on that one.
4) Heathrow --> Boston(on Virgin Atlantic) Overnight in Boston, then Boston --> Baltimore on Sunday morning... Ok, at this point, I figured this was about the best I could do beyond waiting til Sunday to leave London. So I took it.

So, when I finally arrived in the United States and was passing through Immigration, the agent asked me "So which flight did you end up coming in on?" I was confused. "Excuse me?" "Well, sir, we have you entering the United States on 4 different flights to 3 different cites today..." Ah... yeah, that makes sense. Anyways, I guess he found it funny and let me back in the country.

Then I headed over to the baggage claim so I could make my way through Customs. I wasn't really in a hurry at that point, I knew I was spending the night in Boston. Even if I had wanted to hustle at that point it was a non-started, it was about 2am to my body at that point... So everyone is grabbing their bags and slowly the baggage carousel becomes distressingly unpopulated with baggage... Thats the point at which a Customs beagle dog comes and sits down next to my carry-on bag... Little son of a gun sniffed out the second half of my chicken finger BLT from the Heathrow TGI Fridays... My dinner was promptly confiscated... Also by that point I realized that my bag was not there and would not be magically coming out either...

Going through customs after being out of the country for 7 weeks without luggage attracts some attention. Especially when when the forms indicate that I had been on 'farms' and had 'exposure to livestock.' The agents were nice enough, but began to give me the 3rd degree about my level of exposure to livestock and 'soil' in Kenya... Luckily, when I explained to them that I was there working with a research group and we did all the rig-amoral associated with biosecurity, it became a much easier ordeal.

The lost luggage lady from Virgin Atlantic wanted to buy me a beer for having the weirdest itinerary and future travel plans... First of all I had a bag that was tagged for British Airway since I had flown with them from Nairobi. Then I was supposed to fly on American, but instead flew Virgin Atlantic, and in between those flights I was standby for a couple other flights on a couple different airlines... My bag could have found its way onto any of those flights by mistake... So she looked in the computer and couldn't find the bag anywhere... British had scanned the bag in Nairobi, but there was no other record of it elsewhere, she said it was possible that since I was bounced around flights that the bag had gotten set aside somewhere in London... So whatever... Next problem... when they do find my bag how should they get it to me...? Well, I couldn't register a lost baggage claim in Baltimore since I would be checking into a flight to Baltimore on a different airline without baggage... So my bag would have to be sent to Boston once they found it. Ok- Well where is my permanent address to which they can send the bag? Um... well I wasn't really heading 'home' at that point. I would be stopping by my parent's house to pick up some clothing, but then I would be heading down to the shore to see them for 4 days... Then I would be flying to Atlanta for 5 days, then Baltimore for one night, then back to the beach for 4 days, then Baltimore for 5/6 days, then I would be heading to my 'permanent' school address on the island of Grenada in the Eastern Caribbean... The poor lady... She had to try to put all that info into the computer for my claim... So we just agreed to have it sent to my parent's address and have one of our neighbors drag the bag into their house until I had the chance to swing by and pick it up...

Anyways, the rest of the trip was fine. The airline put me up in a hotel room that night. It had a bed roughly the size of the room that I had shared for the past 6 weeks with another person, so I was pretty happy. But didn't really get to enjoy the room cause once I sat on the bed, I used all my energy to call the front desk to arrange a wake-up call for 430am the next morning!

Fast forward 24 hours- I'm at the beach with my family. Enjoying the 'heatwave' that happens to be the lead story on the news here. Virgin Atlantic's computer system still hasn't located my baggage, but I am almost resigned to the fact that it may never be seen. There isn't much in there that holds too much value to me that can't be somehow replaced. Such is life! Anyways, I'm glad to be back, but I already miss the work we were doing in Kenya.

Couple days to relax before I head out to Atlanta!