New Digs!

Easter weekend is finally here! With that, I’m on my autumn break, so I have a bit of time to catch up online. Since I don’t have my best friends or my family here for the holidays I decided to write a post with them in mind. Knowing that my parents and my grandmas are quite curious about where I’m living I decided to fill you in on my apartment….

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Here is the hallway to our front door. On the left you can see the doors into the bedrooms and the bathroom. We are on the 3rd floor of our apartment building.

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This is our kitchen, floor to ceiling window walls lead out to the balcony. We have a small oven with a couple of burners and an apartment sized fridge. Yes, that is my cow cup on the table. No way I was leaving Canada without that! I must drink my daily 6 cups of tea somehow.

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The bathroom (yes, I did clean all the rooms before I took these pictures haha). Thank you to everyone who has sent me videos of massive Australian spiders crawling out of toilets, that is now what I think of every time I go in here!

Here is my bedroom, I got the bigger bedroom/closet but the smaller bed. I typically haven’t liked studying in the same place that I sleep, but so far it is working out okay. The decorations on my wall are all pictures of my friends at home 🙂 There’s a little Tim/Wendys, some selfies, some Cano Palma, some animals, a few travel pics, and a lot of great memories!!

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Now this is where the magic happens! My desk, all the studying and the learning! I’m loving my classes and the learning material. Of course I’m excited for more of the practical and hands on work that I will be doing in my final years. But for now, it still feels like a dream every time I look up and think “I’m going to be a doctor.” The classes have not been too hard yet, we have spent quite a lot of time studying the digestive system. I’ve seen some really cool digestive tracts, including a kangaroo! IMG_0126

Lastly, our balcony is one of my favourite spots! It allows us to crack a window and let in fresh air, and on nice days we can sit on our outdoor couch and soak up the sun! Here is our view! It is even more spectacular at night when all the city lights are on and the ferris wheel and Bolte bridge are changing colors!

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That’s it for today! Happy Easter everyone, wish you were here!

Settling in to school

While it was all fun and games in my last post about my animal handling practicums… this week was the first week of real vet school. I started lectures!

Some of the lectures this week focused on teeth and dentition. I haven’t had a lot of previous classes on this subject and therefore found it quite interesting. At home I work in small animal clinic where we do a lot of dental surgeries. Having the background knowledge about animal teeth will be super beneficial when I go back to work. I can’t say that I find dental consults, cases, and surgeries the most interesting part of veterinary medicine but they are quite common!

Other classes covered the skull and associated bones and muscles; we also spent time looking at microscope slides and identifying cells. My favorite parts of the week were when we got to practice some hands on skills with greyhounds and sheep and do a dissection of a dog leg.

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The biggest bonus I have discovered thus far is that Hills (a major pet food company) provides all the vet students with free tea and coffee in our building!! If nothing else, I picked the best school solely for this reason alone 🙂

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Studying in the vet student kitchen area

By this point I have discovered that most things in Australia are ridiculously expensive (except phone plans!). As an attempt to save money and be more active I’ve bought a bike and plan to bike everywhere instead of taking the tram/train/bus. Hopefully I can keep up with this into the Australian winter season (I hear it rains a lot)… I’ll get back to you on that.

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Here I am (squinting in the sun) with my new bike on the driveway up to the vet building.

Cheers!

“I’m new here”

Hello from Australia!!

 I arrived in Melbourne almost a week and a half ago. We are staying in an apartment hotel close to the university and have spent the majority of our time here researching properties and completing apartment inspections. In the evenings we’ve done a bit of exploring — strolling down Lygon Street (similar to whyte ave) and sampling gelato from some of the many stores. The Yarra river was busy and looked gorgeous under a sunset another night! Carlton (the suburb we are currently in) is heavily influenced by Italians so its a foodies heaven!

 

Jessica and I have spent a lot of time getting lost, explaining our accent, and asking questions —-how long until “I’m new here” is no longer a valid excuse?? Haha

Today, after some very stressful searching, we finally selected an apartment and will hopefully move in in a couple of days!! We should be able to bike or tram to school; and the area seems lovely with lots of shops and a nearby park! Tomorrow there is a well deserved trip to the beach planned and then adventures at Queen Victoria Market in the evening with other vet students!!

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