A museum, lots of wine and haggis, and board games (and some school...)

Two weekends ago a friend and I went to Dynamic Earth, a science type museum in Edinburgh.  It was a free weekend so we decided it would be the perfect time to go.  We waited in line for quite a while, which is to be expected when entrance to the museum is usually £10 and all of a sudden it is free.  You start your tour "travelling back in time" in a time machine to the time of the big bang, then you work yourself through the ages.  I did enjoy myself, but it was definitely geared more towards children.  We finished the tour off by watching a documentary called Supervolacanoes in the ShowDome which is a screen that domes over you and projects 360 degrees around you.  That was definitely my favourite part of the day.

Dynamic Earth (Salisbury Crags behind)

The following Tuesday the school held their Pre-Burns Supper.  Burns Night is a celebration of the famous Scottish poet Robert Burns.  This involved lots of wine drinking.  They announced that over 300 bottles of wine were consumed... And to give you some perspective I'm guessing that at most there were 500 people there.  I thought having gone to university I had seen heavy drinking but they take it to a whole new level here.  They also served haggis with neeps and tatties (turnip and potatoes).  And the night was finished off with a chorus of Auld Lang Syne.

The piping of the Haggis

My haggis, neeps and tatties

The next day I got to help out and be a vet school ambassador and give campus tours to students who were being interviewed for next year.  I really enjoy giving tours.  I am so happy with my choice to go to Edinburgh so I love sharing my experience to this point with the interviewees.

And last night a few of us got together and played board games.  We started with Settlers of Catan.  I made a strategical error about my second move in since I had never played before and that pretty much ended my hopes of winning.  We finished up with Cards Against Humanity.  Everyone brought snacks to share.  I found and made a deadly simple recipe for chocolate peanut butter bars that turned out really well.

I have also been doing some interesting school stuff as well.  We had our first session on learning how to do the physical exam of a horse.  I definitely found that harder than learning to do a physical exam of a dog.  We also had a cardiology practical.  We got to listen to the heart of a live dog and start to learn where to listen to specific heart valves and what they should sound like.  We learned how to do CPR on a stuffed manikin dog and set up an Electrocardiogram.  Lastly we had some more practice reading X-rays.  We don't have our official class on radiography until next year but they are getting us started this year.  What I learned from that session was I am not too bad at reading lateral x-rays (when the animal was on its side for the x-ray), but I need some serious work for VD x-rays (when the animal is on its back).

Well back to studying, we have an in class exam coming up in a couple weeks time.