I apologise for not posting this earlier.. I actually have had it typed up since the end of May but I've had a hectic summer and have not got around to sitting down at my laptop properly.
Forewarning, this is a long blog post! We spent 12 days on the road. So you can imagine the amount of pictures I took. I tried my best to keep this short and sweet! I debated splitting it into two but I thought people may not read it then :P So here ye go :)
Friday May 15th
So, like my previous post says, we stopped by my Missoula families house and Craig put the roofbox onto my car. This box is a lifesaver! It's made us so much more room it's insane! :D Siobhan helped us pack the car up before waving us off until we're all back in Cork next year. We got the car filled off and headed for West Yellowstone! All very excited to be finally facing into our roadtrip :D We had a scenic enough route on the way to West Yellowstone where we were staying for the night. On our trip there we saw plenty of birds on our way there which is always fun :P Since I was driving I didn't get to take many pictures (sorry!) We eventually got to our place about 5.30pm ish I'd like to say? We got checked in and unpacked some things out of the car to make some room for wildlife viewing on our evening trip to Yellowstone :D First though, we stopped at this restaurant called Outpost Restaurant, the food there was absolutely delicious, I got a Bison Burger cause I just love them :P We then took a drive to the park to see what we could get to see this evening. We were in the park 5 minutes and we saw some Bison - not unusual. But it was absolutely pouring down rain, and we were planning on going down to see the Old Faithful Geyser (which requires standing out in the rain in order to be able to see it) so we made a decision to turn around and head back to our Motel and come back in tomorrow! We were staying in the Holiday Inn Motel in West Yellowstone which is really nice.
Saturday May 16th
We woke up bright and early this morning to start off our day in Yellowstone National Park. I opened the door to see what the weather was like for the day and we were kind of in shock. It snowed this morning. There was snow EVERYWHERE! I was not impressed. I had to jump start our neighbours car cause it wouldn't start for them.. I rang up the national park and they got 12 inches of snow last night and one of the main roads was closed because the snow was so bad. GREAT! We quickly got planning our trip for the day - seeing as we now can't go into the park we had to go all the way around it. YAY! So we drove basically, down south around Yellowstone through Idaho and back into Wyoming. I drove for probably 9.5hrs today - not straight! We did stop off and grab food a couple times. We eventually got to our place in Greybull, WY. It was called The Wheels Motel - a nice place. Massive room and incredibly comfortable beds!
Sunday May 17th
We got on the road at 11am again this morning, our destination today was Mt. Rushmore! We were staying in EconoLodge in Rapid City afterwards. Mt. Rushmore was a lot smaller than I was expecting! Even though a friend told me it was tiny, I still expected it to be a small bit bigger than what it is :P But anyways haha, another thing off the bucket list! We had a nice enough day today thank god, no random snowstorms or thunderstorms just nice clear blue skies! We went to a place called Marlins for dinner today. Recommended to us by a guy in the place we were staying - the best restaurant in town apparently! And it was pretty nice alright! After eating here, we got back to our room and watched Game of Thrones in real time! That's always exciting :P
Monday May 18th
Today we made the drive through the Badlands National Park. Absolutely gorgeous! We took many mandatory pictures :P Our stop after the Badlands was Le Mars, Iowa. This town is the Ice Cream Capital of the world, the town where Blue Bunny ice cream was founded. We didn't arrive in until late because we spent a bit longer than expected in the Badlands. The motel we were staying in tonight was called The Amber Inn. They were completely sold out and have been for the last two weeks! The woman in reception rang us up today to see if we were still coming because they were so busy and had already turned away 6 cars at about 3pm today. Insane!
Tuesday May 19th
We only had a two hour drive today that brought us to Omaha, Nebraska. The sixth state on our journey so far: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska. We were spending the day at Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium! I was excited for this because they have over 30 cats here and it's been deemed 'The Best Zoo in the World'. But not long into our day here we had to disagree with this statement.. A lot of the enclosures were a bit small for the animals there, a lot of the animals were not on show and many of the animals were pacing (a sign of stress in captive animals). However, with the cats, the zookeepers deal with animals and they train them to stand or pose in different ways to get a good look at them and they used fake needles to get the animals accustomed to them also in case of medical attention. We got to see a young male lion being trained and also a male jaguar too. The zoo was closing up at 5pm so we got around and saw all the animals we wanted to before heading back to our room for the night. Tonight we were staying in La Quinta Inn in Omaha. Nice place to stay and comfortable too! This evening, we got dominos delivered to our door and got Fiona into Supernatural by watching some of season 1 :P
Wednesday May 20th
Our destination today was Bettendorf, Iowa. We chose this place because it was roughly a 5 hour drive today and so that tomorrow's drive to Chicago would be under 3 hours! This would give us a half a day of exploring and allow me not to panic driving through a city :P We didn't have an incredibly scenic drive through Iowa, a lot of flat land and land being farmed by tractors! Nice to see farm machinery doing work! Makes a change from Montana :P Tonight, we were staying in another EconoLodge. This one was different to the last one we stayed in, but also nice! Very comfortable. A nice relaxing night was had today. We watched some more Supernatural, a nice relaxing night - well needed!
Thursday May 21st
Today we made our three hour drive to Chicago! I actually didn't panic driving through the city, it was actually nice and easy! We got to our hostel before the check in time, but we were still able to park the car out the back so that was nice! Our plan was to arrive a little bit before the check in time so that hopefully there would be some parking spots out the back where I could park up my car. Yay! We hung out in the lobby for roughly 20mins before we were allowed to check in and then we got to our room. Way too cute! We saw that the zoo in Chicago was free so we said we'd wander in and have a look and we were very pleasantly surprised! The enclosures were really nice and we got to see animals straight away! Chicago is a beautiful city! So clean! We eat Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza today - recommended to us by so many people. We each got our own personal pizzas which are recommended for 1 person and they were fab! We didn't sleep that well our first night here, anytime someone used to move in the bed, it used to wake up everyone else.. And our blinds were shite too :P They left in way too much light!
Friday May 22nd
Slept in a bit this morning before heading off our for the day. My first day not having to drive and it was lovely! First we went down to Millenium Park and had a wander around here for a while. Got some lovely pictures of the Chicago Skyline and whatnot. We got to see the Bean - also known as Cloud Gate. Today we did a boat tour that brought us through the river in Chicago and we had a tour guide who told us about the architecture of the buildings in the city. They're gorgeous! We grabbed a subway sandwich for dinner and then headed for the Willis Tower. We had bought our tickets this morning in the hostel, they sell them cheaper than at the building itself so why not?! We got up and it was packed! Then we saw the line for the ledge and lined up ourselves for it. It was SO COOL!! 103 floors up and I got to stand on a glass ledge above the ground outside. Insanely cool experience!
Saturday May 23rd
Today we were making the journey from Chicago to Leamington, Ontario - CANADA! Entering Canada was nice and easy, especially since we were only staying for a few days. We were only travelling to Leamington as a pit stop to stay over. Canada is a little different to the states (no duh!) they use km/hr in Canada and their money is kinda weird. It's plastic :/ But so colourful! :P We staying in a nice Motel tonight! Except we had a really weird neighbour.. Everytime we used to open our front door and go out to the car for something she used to open her door and stare at us.. Weird :/
Sunday May 24th
We made out journey to Niagara! We were staying on the Canadian side in a hostel called Hostelling International. A really cute room! Same type of bed as we had in Chicago but this one was a lot comfier and we also had black out blinds in this place too - always nice! We heard when we were checking in that there was a fireworks show on at the falls tonight so we said we'd just wait until then to go down..so we just chilled out for a while before getting some dinner. The firework show was amazing! We decided we would make a quick stop here again tomorrow morning before crossing back into America.
Monday May 25th
So we headed on down to the falls and my God are they 100 time prettier in the day than in the night time! Absolutely gorgeous! While we were up on top we could see a lot of boats down below going right up close to the falls.. So we checked them out and they were only 19 canadian dollars so we decided why the hell not?! We went on the Hornblower Cruises which I would 100% recommend! and according to many reviews, it a better tour than those on the American side. We got absolutely soaked!! But we had an absolute blast! We essentially spent the whole entire thing in fits laughing while struggling to take pictures :P We crossed over into the American side around 3 or 4pm, I'm not 100% sure. We decided we would take a look at the falls from the American side for a comparison, and they were not as nice at all. The whole area was filthy dirty with rubbish everywhere and you did not get a nice view of the falls at all. Disappointing! Today we were supposed to be driving straight back to Queens but 7hrs would have been a long drive for the very last day of the roadtrip.. We made a sensible decision to stop and stay halfway, and just as well we did because we didn't get to Binghampton in NY until 9pm, this is 3-4 hours away. Tonight we stayed in the Red Roof Inn, which despite the name, does not have a red roof!
Tuesday May 26th
OUR LAST DAY ON THE ROAD!!
We checked out and then headed for home! On our travels we stopped by Fiona's cousins in upstate NY who she stayed with over Christmas time. We had some lovely chats and then made the 40min drive to my Dad's house. We arrived home about 5.30 pm and Dad put on a BBQ for us while we unpacked the very full car. We had everything out in no time so it was nice! And this is it... This is the end of our roadtrip and the end of my year abroad in Montana..
I would like to thank each and every one of you who took the time to read my blog, even if it was just the one time and I bored you too much to come back and read more :P In the last week, I have got some more viewers from other parts of the world which is absolutely insane! Two weeks ago, I hit over 2,000 views on this blog and that is something I NEVER thought I could get. So thank you!
This past year has been an absolute blast and I honestly would do it all over again in a heartbeat. I've made so many good friends from many different parts of the world. I found a second family in Missoula and I'm way too excited to see them in Ireland in July!
A special thank you to all of you again for reading this. But most importantly, a special thank you to my Mom and Dad because without their support, I wouldn't have been able to have the best year of my life. Without them, I wouldn't have ever even thought about studying abroad. Way back in second year it was them who suggested it to me and this whole incredible experience began so fast. I didn't do much research into Montana and what it was like. But I wasn't disappointed, this place is just so beautiful and my pictures do not do it enough justice! I did know someone who went out there last year, so another thank you to Sinead for all the help, advice and information she provided for me and also my friends who were going to Montana too.
I'm not sure if this is the end of Shannen's Travels or not. We'll have to wait and see what the future brings. What I do know, is that I'll be leaving this open for all to read when they want to. Thank you again for supporting me on this incredible experience.
Until next time,
- Shannen.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Thursday, May 21, 2015
The End of an Era....
Up at 6.30am for some last minute studying this morning. Had my genetics exam at 10.10am, it went okay. It could have gone a lot worse so I'm quite happy about it! There was no chance I was going to get an A in that class anyways so what harm!
Fiona and I went and printed off our parks and recreation paper and handed that in before taking a look at the sale going on in the bookstore on campus. 20% off everything except technology. Nice! I bought two University of Montana tshirts and I also bought a really pretty silver necklace. It's in the shape of the state of Montana. I've wanted one for the longest time since I've been here but I put off buying one until today. So happy I got it now though!
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| My thoughts on finals week.... |
Tuesday May 12th
Today was spent studying for my ornithology exam that's on tomorrow morning. This took a long time to do. I had 35 slideshows I think to go through and then each of them have like 40 slides in them. A LOT of information on birds -_-
Wednesday May 13th
Ornithology exam today from 10-12, but I got done with it in over an hour. I was happy with it but I'm not doing terribly in that class anyways so happy days! Today, Desiree allowed us to use hers and Dave's Costco card so we could buy some food in bulk - yay! We stocked up and got taytos, cookies, cereal bars and juice boxes :P We're on the road for 10 days so keeping three girls stocked up and not hungry is a necessity :P The rest of my day was essentially spent packing up my bedroom into bags and boxes. I also threw out some clothes and shoes that are way too worn.. (if you know me you should know that takes a lot :P)! This evening, Fiona, Sarah and I went out to Walmart so Fiona could get some vaccum bags and then we stopped by Dairy Queen on our way home, one last time. We got home and straight away I put on the new episode of Supernatural. IT WAS SO GOOD! That's all I will say on the matter :P
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| My much loved, but very worn converse </3 |
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| My beloved Lewis and Clark room <3 |
Thursday May 14th
I was woke up at an unreasonable hour this morning so I put it to good use. I started cleaning the apartment top to bottom. It smelled of bleach quite a bit but at least we know it's clean :P We rented out a hoover from the office to clean the place thoroughly. I'm pretty sure I pulled a muscle in my back, between lifting and moving the couches, to lifting heavy bags and using our crappy hoover to reach into little crevices. FUN!
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| The very clean kitchen :D |
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| Bison and Elk burger with sweet potato fries :) |
Dave and Desiree called over tonight and we watched The Guardians of the Galaxy - always a good movie! :)
Friday May 15th
Today's the day. The day we leave Missoula until God knows when :( I called over to Shannon and Craig's this morning so I could get the roof box thingy. It's so perfect! Craig fitted it for me - yay! We were able to store a load of stuff in it, it's fantastic! This allowed me to be able to see out my back window of the car and it also gives the back seat passenger extra room, which is always nice! Me being the driver, I get all the room in the world :P After saying all our goodbyes we headed for road at 11.40am. Stopped and filled the car up and off we trotted to West Yellowstone! We headed in the Butte direction, and stopped off just outside Butte to go to the bathroom and also fill the car up with gas - whooop!
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| My very bare Lewis and Clark bedroom </3 |
Well there you have it... My time in Missoula has unfortunately come to an end.. A good ending though mind you, I've really enjoyed my time here and I would have honestly not changed any bit of it. As cheesy as this sounds, it has honestly been the best year of my life and I've made so many amazing friends and seen so much of the U.S. Check back with my next post to see the amazing roadtrip I'm going on with both Fiona and also Aoife, my friend from Liverpool.
Thank you for reading my blog this past year, it means a lot! We're coming to end the of Shannen's Travels, for now..
- Shannen
Friday, May 15, 2015
Week 31 - The Beginning of the End......
Monday May 4th
Another non-exciting day in the life of Shannen. I didn't go into my genetics lecture this morning, I was exhausted and it was just a guest lecture so I didn't feel the need to go. Went in for ornithology and then spent the rest of my day finishing off my 10 page paper for my recreation class. Nothing too exciting :) Fiona and I also took a little trip to the mall today. I bought a new pair of shorts for the summer time since the ones I've been wearing are slowly being worn down! I also took the opportunity to get my last Roxiberry Frozen Yoghurt! :O
Tuesday May 5th
We had a review session in rangeland ecology today. Brady went over all the stuff we've done since our last exam so that was nice. After that, we had a break and then a review session for our parks and recreation behaviour class. Libby was back but she didn't stay for very long..had a small review and then she left again :( Found out I got a 97% in the peer review for my recreation class too. Which I did NOT expect!! So naturally, I'm quite happy with that!
This evening, I called to my Missoula families house to try and help them plan out a little trip to Ireland over the summer. Very exciting stuff! :D
Wednesday May 6th
Today, I went to genetics and we got to do some behaviour and evolution stuff which is really cool! Ornithology was the same old stuff except we got cookies :P That's always nice! Haha. My whole afternoon was then spent cramming for my recreation behaviour exam. A group of us met up to do some study together, but everyone was so not bothered it didn't last for a very long time.. I headed to bed nice and early cause I have a 7am field exam tomorrow morning.
Thursday May 7th
Up bright and early this morning for my 7am field exam. Jamie drove Fiona and I to college for the last time this morning, how sweet of her :D We left shortly after 7 am for the first destination for our quiz. We saw a crap tonne of birds today so that was always fun :P I ended up only getting one wrong, and that was cause I couldn't see the little bird properly.. But oh well..Still not bad! :D
Spent the rest of my time today up until 2pm cramming in information for my recreation behaviour exam. Turned out it wasn't what everyone expected. We were told it was going to be 50:50 with Libby and Mike material. Turned out to be 90% Mike and only 10% Libby.. Not cool. Everyone was really annoyed and we had a big group congregation outside the building afterwards discussing it :P
Friday May 8th
My last ever lecture at the University of Montana was had this morning and also my last EVER 8am lecture. To say I am happy about that is an understatement! :P I went home at 9am and revised for my rangeland ecology exam today at 2pm. Brady was nice enough to allow us to move it seeing as we had 2 other exams yesterday. What a dote! It went good though! It wasn't a train wreck but it also wasn't like fantastic but I'm happy with it! :)
Fiona and I went straight home and I got to work cleaning. I scrubbed our kitchen and the main part of the bathroom cause we were having friends over this evening for a potluck get together.
Bridget brought a load of cute Hawaiian party favours including lei's and little flowery things you clip into your hair.. I don't know what they're called :/ There are specific ways to wear them, on the right side you're single/interested and on the left side you're taken/not interested. We also got a Hawaiian backdrop where we took all our pictures :P Bridget and Britney also made buns (cupcakes to the americans) with icing in the colour of the Irish flag :P Everyone brought food and the aprty started off to be great! Not gonna lie though, I'm disappointed some people didn't turn up and a lot left early but with the people that stayed around we had a fantastic time playing cards against humanity! It was such a nice way to have a last get together in our Lewis and Clark apartment before we have to leave :(
Saturday May 9th
I slept in until 11.30am today and it was beautiful!I spent today doing my genetics take home exam as well as some genetics study! Seeing as it's my first exam on Monday morning and I've nothing else until Wednesday I'll concentrate on this.. Nothing exciting :P
Sunday May 10th
Today was also spent studying my genetics. So much fun! Today is also American Mother's Day so I bought Shannon a bunch of flowers seeing as she is my Missoula Mom. Another non-eventful day of editing my Recreation Behaviour paper and getting my genetics study done and dusted with.
So there's my second last week in Missoula, full of studying and exams! Fun times :D Next week is real finals week and it's also time to pack up my life from this year and make a trip of a lifetime! Make sure to check back with next weeks blog. I'm going to start my roadtrip across America and it's going to be a lot of fun! :D Also, sorry for the lack of photos, I accidentally deleted them off my phone but they wern't anything overly exciting! :)
Thanks for reading guys!
- Shannen.
Another non-exciting day in the life of Shannen. I didn't go into my genetics lecture this morning, I was exhausted and it was just a guest lecture so I didn't feel the need to go. Went in for ornithology and then spent the rest of my day finishing off my 10 page paper for my recreation class. Nothing too exciting :) Fiona and I also took a little trip to the mall today. I bought a new pair of shorts for the summer time since the ones I've been wearing are slowly being worn down! I also took the opportunity to get my last Roxiberry Frozen Yoghurt! :O
Tuesday May 5th
We had a review session in rangeland ecology today. Brady went over all the stuff we've done since our last exam so that was nice. After that, we had a break and then a review session for our parks and recreation behaviour class. Libby was back but she didn't stay for very long..had a small review and then she left again :( Found out I got a 97% in the peer review for my recreation class too. Which I did NOT expect!! So naturally, I'm quite happy with that!
This evening, I called to my Missoula families house to try and help them plan out a little trip to Ireland over the summer. Very exciting stuff! :D
Wednesday May 6th
Today, I went to genetics and we got to do some behaviour and evolution stuff which is really cool! Ornithology was the same old stuff except we got cookies :P That's always nice! Haha. My whole afternoon was then spent cramming for my recreation behaviour exam. A group of us met up to do some study together, but everyone was so not bothered it didn't last for a very long time.. I headed to bed nice and early cause I have a 7am field exam tomorrow morning.
Thursday May 7th
Up bright and early this morning for my 7am field exam. Jamie drove Fiona and I to college for the last time this morning, how sweet of her :D We left shortly after 7 am for the first destination for our quiz. We saw a crap tonne of birds today so that was always fun :P I ended up only getting one wrong, and that was cause I couldn't see the little bird properly.. But oh well..Still not bad! :D
Spent the rest of my time today up until 2pm cramming in information for my recreation behaviour exam. Turned out it wasn't what everyone expected. We were told it was going to be 50:50 with Libby and Mike material. Turned out to be 90% Mike and only 10% Libby.. Not cool. Everyone was really annoyed and we had a big group congregation outside the building afterwards discussing it :P
Friday May 8th
My last ever lecture at the University of Montana was had this morning and also my last EVER 8am lecture. To say I am happy about that is an understatement! :P I went home at 9am and revised for my rangeland ecology exam today at 2pm. Brady was nice enough to allow us to move it seeing as we had 2 other exams yesterday. What a dote! It went good though! It wasn't a train wreck but it also wasn't like fantastic but I'm happy with it! :)
Fiona and I went straight home and I got to work cleaning. I scrubbed our kitchen and the main part of the bathroom cause we were having friends over this evening for a potluck get together.
Bridget brought a load of cute Hawaiian party favours including lei's and little flowery things you clip into your hair.. I don't know what they're called :/ There are specific ways to wear them, on the right side you're single/interested and on the left side you're taken/not interested. We also got a Hawaiian backdrop where we took all our pictures :P Bridget and Britney also made buns (cupcakes to the americans) with icing in the colour of the Irish flag :P Everyone brought food and the aprty started off to be great! Not gonna lie though, I'm disappointed some people didn't turn up and a lot left early but with the people that stayed around we had a fantastic time playing cards against humanity! It was such a nice way to have a last get together in our Lewis and Clark apartment before we have to leave :(
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| Spring Break Crew :) |
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| Our supply of food :) |
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| The Irish Buns :D |
I slept in until 11.30am today and it was beautiful!I spent today doing my genetics take home exam as well as some genetics study! Seeing as it's my first exam on Monday morning and I've nothing else until Wednesday I'll concentrate on this.. Nothing exciting :P
Sunday May 10th
Today was also spent studying my genetics. So much fun! Today is also American Mother's Day so I bought Shannon a bunch of flowers seeing as she is my Missoula Mom. Another non-eventful day of editing my Recreation Behaviour paper and getting my genetics study done and dusted with.
So there's my second last week in Missoula, full of studying and exams! Fun times :D Next week is real finals week and it's also time to pack up my life from this year and make a trip of a lifetime! Make sure to check back with next weeks blog. I'm going to start my roadtrip across America and it's going to be a lot of fun! :D Also, sorry for the lack of photos, I accidentally deleted them off my phone but they wern't anything overly exciting! :)
Thanks for reading guys!
- Shannen.
Friday, May 8, 2015
Week 30 - An adventure to Butte and Bannack Ghost Town!
Monday April 27th
Just your average day in college today. We start our peer reviews for my ornithology class. We are all split up into groups of 5-6 people and over the week we get 6 random grants to review. We have to treat it like it's a real panel and we have to decide whether we think the grant is good enough to be awarded the money. It's a pretty cool idea, and it makes the class nice and relaxed as well as interesting.
I spent my evening preparing some ornithology slides for my exam this week. We don't have to do them but it makes learning the birds easier than flicking through pages of a book! I got ink for our printer which meant taking a drive out to Walmart. Hopefully this will be the last of the ink we'll have to buy. This evening, I collected Fiona from work as she had taken some of the boxes from the Food Zoo. We'll use these to pack up our stuff for the Irish students coming out here next year.
Tuesday April 28th
11am start today with rangeland ecology being more of the same stuff. Nothing exciting again happened today. For Recreation Behaviour we had a guest speaker who is a PhD student in Recreation of some sort.
This evening Fiona and I went and bought our 3D tickets to see The Avengers: Age of Ultron for Thursday night. I am quite excited for the movie if I'm honest :P We went and got some DQ afterwards just cause :P
Wednesday April 29th
8am start with genetics, we've started taking about human diseases and the likes now. Interesting enough stuff! We did some more peer review today in Ornithology and this time I was leading a discussion. I got a really cool paper which wants to study the way raven's follow wolves and feed off the carcasses left by them. They want to find out whether this behaviour is learned or innate which I think is really cool! We awarded them an 8/10 which Kris said was the highest rating of all the grants she had heard to date! So now I'm starting to worry that my own grant didn't do too well :P
My whole afternoon was spent learning my birds for my practical exam tomorrow.
I ended up falling asleep on my desk while studying them.. Not exactly the best way to study is it :P Woke up two hours later and continued with my learning.
Thursday April 30th
So I woke up at 6am to do some last minute cramming for my practical exam. 221 birds to learn and there is only going to be 95 questions. YAY. I had the exam at 8am which surprisingly didn't go horribly, it was okay! There was some birds I was questioning myself on but I don't think I did too badly.
Rangeland ecology flew today, we had three presentations and they were over and done with in no time so that was nice! We got out at 11.50 and class isn't supposed to end until 12.30 :P Handy out!!
Kate had organized a massive International photo which I helped out with today too. I was going to put the photo in, but because there's so many other people in it I don't want to, so if you're my friend on facebook you can see it there!
Fiona and I went to see The Avengers: Age of Ultron last night and by God is it a good movie! Would highly recommend for everyone to go and see it! It's also really funny too :D
Friday May 1st
IT'S ALREADY MAY! NOOO!
I skipped my genetics class this morning since I didn't get to bed until 2am last night since we went to the late showing of the Avengers. At 12.30pm I had an appointment to get the oil changed in my car and that all went grand. We left Lewis and Clark at 2pm :D
Many sing songs were had on our two hour drive to Butte as well as seeing a crap tonne of raptors! Bald Eagles, Turkey Vultures, 4 Golden Eagles!! (one of which flew right in front of my car!!) we saw some Kestrels, and some other raptors that were too high up in the sky or too far away for me to identify while driving :P
We headed straight for the 'city of Butte'. We drove around first for a while, it was like going back in time. We then went to Berkeley Pit, which was pretty cool! The whole area used to be mines, and one day they were going blowing up some part of it but ended up blowing up the wrong part and caused this massive pit! Over the years, it began to fill up with water. And because there is a lot of different minerals in this area that were being mined, they've all come together and mixed with water in this pit and have formed an extremely toxic lake. A man told us that this one time he was there he had a couple Canadian geese fly in and all die straight away because of the toxicity.
From here we drove up a hill to get a nice view of Butte. A recommendation by the same man that told us about the geese. So windy but so nice!
We went back and checked into our 'Inn'. It's a Motel. And so cute! We stayed at America's Best Value Inn, so it only worked out at $19 dollars each for the room which was perfect! We had really comfy beds and our own bathroom. We messed about here for a while first before heading back into town to get some dinner. Tripadvisor had good ratings for a place called Sparky's Garage, so we said why not try this place out. Everyone found something on the menu that they liked to that was that. The inside of this place was so cool! It was once a garage before (I think, I don't actually think this was the original but you get me!). Since coming to the states this year, I have discovered I do in fact like pulled pork. So I went with the BBQ pulled pork and chicken option - Sparky's combo. It was insanely nice! (the picture doesn't really do it much justice :P).
Saturday May 2nd
Today we left the motel at 11am, that was check out time. We first took a look around the shops in Butte that sold 'souvenirs'. Mainly postcards for me, I'm putting postcards from everywhere I've been into a photo album when I get back home :) We stopped at a petrol station, filled up the car and our bellies and headed off for Bannack State Park. Not the easiest place to find, and my sat nav wasn't working properly for me so we went old school on it and used a map. Fiona gave me the directions and eventually we got there! Now THIS place was like going back in time to an old western movie or something. It was SO cool!
Naturally I took plenty of pictures, I'll post a bunch below and caption them underneath.
While we were here we also got the opportunity to go panning for gold! I didn't get any pictures of this because my hands were in water the whole time (sorry!). But this was cool! I unfortunately didn't get any gold, but I got a good few garnets. Fiona and Aoife found specks of gold in their pans. It's really tough on your back, I don't know how people did/do this!
We decided to take the scenic route home. This involved driving through Jackson, Wisdom, over the Bitterroot Mountains, through Sula, Darby, Hamilton and eventually back to Missoula. All very tired but all very happy with our trip. For anyone coming to Montana, I would 100% recommend going to see Bannack State Park if possible! I know there's other ghost towns out there but this one is quiet, and it literally like stepping into the past. My photos just don't do it enough justice.
Sunday May 3rd
Today was spent doing my genetics homework and I got it done yay! We just had to search a paper on an example of adaptive radiation that we hadn't talked about in class before - I chose bivalves. Fiona and I also packed up a lot of our apartment stuff today. This makes me rather sad. It's insane the amount of stuff you gather over the space of a year. A lot of it we bought and we were able to pick up some stuff for free so it was handy :)
I then started on my recreation behaviour paper which has to be about 10 pages long.... Over the course of the day I got 5 pages done so I don't think that's too bad? Double spacing is a blessing!
Well ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of another week in Missoula. The amount I have left here is getting shorter and shorter pretty fast and it's kinda scaring me. Unfortunately, next weeks post won't be half as interesting as this weeks as it's the start of my final exams. And because I've had exams up until last week, I can't even study for them yet. Slightly daunting mind you, but it should be fine. I'm not stressing or worrying about them, just trying to enjoy my last few days in Missoula.
Thanks for reading,
- Shannen.
Just your average day in college today. We start our peer reviews for my ornithology class. We are all split up into groups of 5-6 people and over the week we get 6 random grants to review. We have to treat it like it's a real panel and we have to decide whether we think the grant is good enough to be awarded the money. It's a pretty cool idea, and it makes the class nice and relaxed as well as interesting.
I spent my evening preparing some ornithology slides for my exam this week. We don't have to do them but it makes learning the birds easier than flicking through pages of a book! I got ink for our printer which meant taking a drive out to Walmart. Hopefully this will be the last of the ink we'll have to buy. This evening, I collected Fiona from work as she had taken some of the boxes from the Food Zoo. We'll use these to pack up our stuff for the Irish students coming out here next year.
Tuesday April 28th
11am start today with rangeland ecology being more of the same stuff. Nothing exciting again happened today. For Recreation Behaviour we had a guest speaker who is a PhD student in Recreation of some sort.
This evening Fiona and I went and bought our 3D tickets to see The Avengers: Age of Ultron for Thursday night. I am quite excited for the movie if I'm honest :P We went and got some DQ afterwards just cause :P
Wednesday April 29th
8am start with genetics, we've started taking about human diseases and the likes now. Interesting enough stuff! We did some more peer review today in Ornithology and this time I was leading a discussion. I got a really cool paper which wants to study the way raven's follow wolves and feed off the carcasses left by them. They want to find out whether this behaviour is learned or innate which I think is really cool! We awarded them an 8/10 which Kris said was the highest rating of all the grants she had heard to date! So now I'm starting to worry that my own grant didn't do too well :P
My whole afternoon was spent learning my birds for my practical exam tomorrow.
I ended up falling asleep on my desk while studying them.. Not exactly the best way to study is it :P Woke up two hours later and continued with my learning.
Thursday April 30th
So I woke up at 6am to do some last minute cramming for my practical exam. 221 birds to learn and there is only going to be 95 questions. YAY. I had the exam at 8am which surprisingly didn't go horribly, it was okay! There was some birds I was questioning myself on but I don't think I did too badly.
Rangeland ecology flew today, we had three presentations and they were over and done with in no time so that was nice! We got out at 11.50 and class isn't supposed to end until 12.30 :P Handy out!!
Kate had organized a massive International photo which I helped out with today too. I was going to put the photo in, but because there's so many other people in it I don't want to, so if you're my friend on facebook you can see it there!
Fiona and I went to see The Avengers: Age of Ultron last night and by God is it a good movie! Would highly recommend for everyone to go and see it! It's also really funny too :D
Friday May 1st
IT'S ALREADY MAY! NOOO!
I skipped my genetics class this morning since I didn't get to bed until 2am last night since we went to the late showing of the Avengers. At 12.30pm I had an appointment to get the oil changed in my car and that all went grand. We left Lewis and Clark at 2pm :D
Many sing songs were had on our two hour drive to Butte as well as seeing a crap tonne of raptors! Bald Eagles, Turkey Vultures, 4 Golden Eagles!! (one of which flew right in front of my car!!) we saw some Kestrels, and some other raptors that were too high up in the sky or too far away for me to identify while driving :P
We headed straight for the 'city of Butte'. We drove around first for a while, it was like going back in time. We then went to Berkeley Pit, which was pretty cool! The whole area used to be mines, and one day they were going blowing up some part of it but ended up blowing up the wrong part and caused this massive pit! Over the years, it began to fill up with water. And because there is a lot of different minerals in this area that were being mined, they've all come together and mixed with water in this pit and have formed an extremely toxic lake. A man told us that this one time he was there he had a couple Canadian geese fly in and all die straight away because of the toxicity.
From here we drove up a hill to get a nice view of Butte. A recommendation by the same man that told us about the geese. So windy but so nice!
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| Berkeley Pit :) |
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| The view of Butte from a hill :) |
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| The menu for Sparky's Garage :) |
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| My BBQ pulled pork and BBQ chicken with sweet potato fries :) |
Today we left the motel at 11am, that was check out time. We first took a look around the shops in Butte that sold 'souvenirs'. Mainly postcards for me, I'm putting postcards from everywhere I've been into a photo album when I get back home :) We stopped at a petrol station, filled up the car and our bellies and headed off for Bannack State Park. Not the easiest place to find, and my sat nav wasn't working properly for me so we went old school on it and used a map. Fiona gave me the directions and eventually we got there! Now THIS place was like going back in time to an old western movie or something. It was SO cool!
Naturally I took plenty of pictures, I'll post a bunch below and caption them underneath.
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| This is the first building you see when you walk into Bannack. |
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| An old beat up car. |
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| Some minecarts and tracks in the town. Eerie. |
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| The church, in here the front row seats are more comfy for the more 'well off' people and the further back in the church you go the seats are wooden for those less well off. |
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| Myself peaking out of one of the little houses. |
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| The back of some of the houses. The little hut to the left of the picture is an actual outhouse! |
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| This was the school. How cool!! |
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| And this is the inside of the school, it's so cool. Of course I stood at the top and dictated! |
We decided to take the scenic route home. This involved driving through Jackson, Wisdom, over the Bitterroot Mountains, through Sula, Darby, Hamilton and eventually back to Missoula. All very tired but all very happy with our trip. For anyone coming to Montana, I would 100% recommend going to see Bannack State Park if possible! I know there's other ghost towns out there but this one is quiet, and it literally like stepping into the past. My photos just don't do it enough justice.
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| At the top of the Bitterroot Mountains :) |
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| WELCOME TO MONTANA! |
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| Beautiful picture Aoife took for me on the drive home :) |
Sunday May 3rd
Today was spent doing my genetics homework and I got it done yay! We just had to search a paper on an example of adaptive radiation that we hadn't talked about in class before - I chose bivalves. Fiona and I also packed up a lot of our apartment stuff today. This makes me rather sad. It's insane the amount of stuff you gather over the space of a year. A lot of it we bought and we were able to pick up some stuff for free so it was handy :)
I then started on my recreation behaviour paper which has to be about 10 pages long.... Over the course of the day I got 5 pages done so I don't think that's too bad? Double spacing is a blessing!
Well ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of another week in Missoula. The amount I have left here is getting shorter and shorter pretty fast and it's kinda scaring me. Unfortunately, next weeks post won't be half as interesting as this weeks as it's the start of my final exams. And because I've had exams up until last week, I can't even study for them yet. Slightly daunting mind you, but it should be fine. I'm not stressing or worrying about them, just trying to enjoy my last few days in Missoula.
Thanks for reading,
- Shannen.
Monday, April 27, 2015
Week 29 - Birding, Hurling and a BBQ - Yay!
Monday April 20th
Today was an ordinary Monday. Nothing too exciting happened today! I spent a lot of my 'free' time doing both of my proposals that are due today. I also slept for like two hours! Aoife and I went and did a tiny bit of shopping, I didn't get anything though so yay for me! :P
Tuesday April 21st
Cherished my sleep in again this morning :P Had the usual classes starting at 11am and I finished up at 3.30pm so not too bad. This evening also consisted of finishing up my two proposals, I still haven't finished my rangeland one - oh well! This evening, Fiona and I went to the Wildlife Society meeting and got to vote in the upcoming elections - exciting stuff! We afterwards went to Dairy Queen cause I have a buy one get one free voucher, so seeing as it was a gorgeous evening out we said why not! :P This evening I started to do some work on my ornithology slideshows I had been making all semester long with the birds to know. I have a lot of improvements to make to them to help me learn the birds! Next Thursday, I have my birds of Montana practical exam. We have 100 questions on it, 10 of those will be the songs of birds, and the other 90 will be identifying the birds we've already done. It's going to be tough but I'm picking up my bird call pretty easily thankfully! :) Fiona and I watched a David Attenborough documentary to prepare ourselves for our exam Friday :P
Wednesday April 22nd
Today in genetics we have started talking about human evolution which is incredibly cool! Probably my favourite part, tied with speciation :D Nothing more exciting happened in my classes today. This afternoon I took a trip out to Walmart to buy a swimsuit to hopefully use this weekend at the Hot Springs! :D This weekend is another busy one with plenty assignments to get done and both people and places to see :P I got to watch Supernatural tonight as well as making head way on some ornithology lectures. So much to learn, so little time!
Thursday April 23rd
Today is my last 7am field trip! Yay! Once again, Jamie picked us up and brought us to campus :D We headed out to some gorgeous spot near Missoula somewhere, this place doesn't have a name but has lots of cute little trails. We did some more bird watching. We got to see some Red Naped Sapsuckers, Flickers, Song Sparrows, Tree Swallows, Turkey Vulture, Black Capped-Chickadees - loads! We also did a 10 minute point count where we all had to go quiet and count the numbers of birds we both heard and saw - so that was kinda cool too! Testing our knowledge out a bit :P I then decided to be a bit bold and not go to my other two lectures today, I have a load of work to get done for my exam tomorrow and since the weather has been so nice I'm not in any mindset to do study so I haven't got much done all week.
Jamie came over this evening and we watched another 3 of David Attenborough's documentaries on The Life of Birds as study for our exam tomorrow :D
Friday April 24th
Up bright and early this morning, talked about human evolution some more in genetics and then had my ornithology exam which went okay I think. We had the added stress of trying to sort out an extra roommate for our house for next years house for college which is always great craic!
I got this mad notion today to start packing up some stuff, so I did.I packed up my wintery stuff into a suitcase. It makes me sad to think I leave in three weeks from today. I got to chat to Mom and Aisling on Facetime for a while in my free time, and then I sat down and started reading my Missoula Mom's thesis that she did for her PhD! I got halfway through before starting on some college work due for next week. I powered through and got my rangeland summaries done, as well as my rangeland proposal.
Saturday April 25th
Got up bright and early this morning to go do some bird watching with Fiona. We have a lab practical next Thursday where we have to learn to identify birds by song and sight. We were delayed leaving cause of some fun drama with our house for next year in Cork again. It never seems to end!
Despite the drama, we got to see some cool birds, a great horned owl for example! As well as some waterfowl like mallards and wood ducks. We saw a Killdeer, some Red Winged Blackbirds, as well as some swallows and identified various birds by their calls. Successful day!
We got home and grabbed a quick lunch before heading off to campus for the Grizzly Hurling matches that were on. We went and had a look at the craic there before taking a stroll around campus. For the longest time, I've wanted to walk around and take some random pictures of the campus so we got to do that today, while it was nice and quiet. Fiona, Kate, Aoife and I messed around and posed with the Grizzly statue and of course the UM Clock Tower :P
This evening, Fiona and I were invited to a BBQ at my Missoula families house. It was such a nice relaxing evening, I'm so grateful I got to meet them! We had a fine feed and I tried 5 new foods today! A brat (which is like a really fat sausage), I tried spare ribs (yes I know, don't judge me :P), I tried hummus, which I loved! I also tried a piece of a horse radish, which I wasn't a big fan of and some pea things, that were okay, but I wouldn't have them again :P
Sunday April 26th
Two months until my birthday! :D Today I got to watch a new episode of Game of Thrones and then I went to work on assignments due for tomorrow. Such as my ornithology peer review, and then I also went to work on my genetics homework. I also put a lot of time into preparing my ornithology presentations for my bird exam next week. Fun times!
This evening, I met with Fiona, Lauren and Jamie on campus to go over some birds together for our exam. Nothing too exciting happened today I'm afraid!
So guys, another week down. Thanks again for reading and I hope you're enjoying my blog posts! Things have been slightly more exciting these past two weeks but things will also be quietening down a little bit as finals week is fast approaching :(
Until next week,
- Shannen
Today was an ordinary Monday. Nothing too exciting happened today! I spent a lot of my 'free' time doing both of my proposals that are due today. I also slept for like two hours! Aoife and I went and did a tiny bit of shopping, I didn't get anything though so yay for me! :P
Tuesday April 21st
Cherished my sleep in again this morning :P Had the usual classes starting at 11am and I finished up at 3.30pm so not too bad. This evening also consisted of finishing up my two proposals, I still haven't finished my rangeland one - oh well! This evening, Fiona and I went to the Wildlife Society meeting and got to vote in the upcoming elections - exciting stuff! We afterwards went to Dairy Queen cause I have a buy one get one free voucher, so seeing as it was a gorgeous evening out we said why not! :P This evening I started to do some work on my ornithology slideshows I had been making all semester long with the birds to know. I have a lot of improvements to make to them to help me learn the birds! Next Thursday, I have my birds of Montana practical exam. We have 100 questions on it, 10 of those will be the songs of birds, and the other 90 will be identifying the birds we've already done. It's going to be tough but I'm picking up my bird call pretty easily thankfully! :) Fiona and I watched a David Attenborough documentary to prepare ourselves for our exam Friday :P
Wednesday April 22nd
Today in genetics we have started talking about human evolution which is incredibly cool! Probably my favourite part, tied with speciation :D Nothing more exciting happened in my classes today. This afternoon I took a trip out to Walmart to buy a swimsuit to hopefully use this weekend at the Hot Springs! :D This weekend is another busy one with plenty assignments to get done and both people and places to see :P I got to watch Supernatural tonight as well as making head way on some ornithology lectures. So much to learn, so little time!
Thursday April 23rd
Today is my last 7am field trip! Yay! Once again, Jamie picked us up and brought us to campus :D We headed out to some gorgeous spot near Missoula somewhere, this place doesn't have a name but has lots of cute little trails. We did some more bird watching. We got to see some Red Naped Sapsuckers, Flickers, Song Sparrows, Tree Swallows, Turkey Vulture, Black Capped-Chickadees - loads! We also did a 10 minute point count where we all had to go quiet and count the numbers of birds we both heard and saw - so that was kinda cool too! Testing our knowledge out a bit :P I then decided to be a bit bold and not go to my other two lectures today, I have a load of work to get done for my exam tomorrow and since the weather has been so nice I'm not in any mindset to do study so I haven't got much done all week.
Jamie came over this evening and we watched another 3 of David Attenborough's documentaries on The Life of Birds as study for our exam tomorrow :D
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| Our Field Trip Location. |
Friday April 24th
Up bright and early this morning, talked about human evolution some more in genetics and then had my ornithology exam which went okay I think. We had the added stress of trying to sort out an extra roommate for our house for next years house for college which is always great craic!
I got this mad notion today to start packing up some stuff, so I did.I packed up my wintery stuff into a suitcase. It makes me sad to think I leave in three weeks from today. I got to chat to Mom and Aisling on Facetime for a while in my free time, and then I sat down and started reading my Missoula Mom's thesis that she did for her PhD! I got halfway through before starting on some college work due for next week. I powered through and got my rangeland summaries done, as well as my rangeland proposal.
Saturday April 25th
Got up bright and early this morning to go do some bird watching with Fiona. We have a lab practical next Thursday where we have to learn to identify birds by song and sight. We were delayed leaving cause of some fun drama with our house for next year in Cork again. It never seems to end!
Despite the drama, we got to see some cool birds, a great horned owl for example! As well as some waterfowl like mallards and wood ducks. We saw a Killdeer, some Red Winged Blackbirds, as well as some swallows and identified various birds by their calls. Successful day!
We got home and grabbed a quick lunch before heading off to campus for the Grizzly Hurling matches that were on. We went and had a look at the craic there before taking a stroll around campus. For the longest time, I've wanted to walk around and take some random pictures of the campus so we got to do that today, while it was nice and quiet. Fiona, Kate, Aoife and I messed around and posed with the Grizzly statue and of course the UM Clock Tower :P
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| Grizzly Washington Stadium - Hurling! |
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| Griz Statue, UM Clock Tower and Mt. Sentinel. This place is gorgeous! |
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| The insane spread of food at Shannon and Craig's house! |
Two months until my birthday! :D Today I got to watch a new episode of Game of Thrones and then I went to work on assignments due for tomorrow. Such as my ornithology peer review, and then I also went to work on my genetics homework. I also put a lot of time into preparing my ornithology presentations for my bird exam next week. Fun times!
This evening, I met with Fiona, Lauren and Jamie on campus to go over some birds together for our exam. Nothing too exciting happened today I'm afraid!
So guys, another week down. Thanks again for reading and I hope you're enjoying my blog posts! Things have been slightly more exciting these past two weeks but things will also be quietening down a little bit as finals week is fast approaching :(
Until next week,
- Shannen
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Week 28 - Bird Watching, Kyi-Yo Pow-Wow and a Daytrip!
Monday April 13th
Today started off as any ordinary week would. I struggled to roll out of bed at 7am for my genetics lecture, but we were doing really interesting stuff this week! Sexual selection in animals, mainly birds and mammals. Pretty cool stuff! Ornithology essentially consisted of the same stuff as genetics but just bird orientated. So nothing too exciting today in college!
I got home and got working on a peer review paper that is due in this thursday for my recreation behaviour module. It's a tough one, essentially we have to go through a scientific journal and nit pick everything we can find wrong with it. I felt so cruel.
I've also had a really bad headache all week so I decided I'd head out for a walk/jog, the weather here is just class and I needed a break from my work..
Tuesday April 14th
I love my mini sleep in until 9.30am on Tuesdays. I cherish it now! :P Classes went on as usual today. In rangeland ecology, Brady (the lecturer seemed a little down). At the start of class he asked us all to take out a sheet of paper with our names on it - so naturally everyone got worried thinking we were getting one of these pop quiz things I see on TV. Nope. He asked us to write down three things we wouldn't sacrifice for our degree/career. He then told us to post these on our walls in our bedroom somewhere and to look at them often and not to forget about them.. We got a nice talk on how life basically does not get any easier the older you get and these things you're not willing to sacrifice will change too. Very deep and philosophical start to my Tuesday morning!
Recreation behaviour was the same ole stuff again today, nothing too exciting. After class, Fiona, Tana, Emma, Boston, Shayla and I met up to discuss the peer review we have due for Thursdays class. We got a few ideas around and about the place before heading home.
All today I've had this weird blurry vision, which I've since put down to having a migraine. So yay for that!
Wednesday April 15th
Yeah today was another one of those days where I did not want to get out of bed. But I did. At 7am. As usual. Carried on with the usual stuff today, genetics, then ornithology and then my genetics lab. Nothing new and exciting to report unfortunately!
This afternoon I got to Facetime my cousin Courtney for a while, it was nice to catch up and we had a hilarious look back on old embarrassing photos of ourselves.. Typical! :P After this, I spent my whole evening working on the peer review for tomorrow and I submitted my two reviews for Rangeland Ecology and my rangeland summaries for tomorrow also. That's kind of all this evening consisted of really. I got to watch the new episode of Supernatural as well which was good - as always! :D
Thursday April 16th
Up at 6am this morning for a 7am field trip. It was freezing cold today with frost as well so I had my hat and gloves out. We got a lift to campus with Jamie again this morning - what a lifesaver she is! :D We headed up to an area called Blue Mountain, it's a popular recreational area that people bring their dogs [I know this because our recreation behaviour lecturer Libby complains about people who 1) don't pick up the dog crap and 2) put it in a bag but leave it there. And I got to see this first hand].
We saw so many cool birds!
Unfortunately I have no pictures cause I didn't bring a camera with me. But we got to see a bunch of swallows mobbing a hawk of some kind. We weren't sure what kind it was but these little birds were all flying above him like crazy and then one would make a massive swoop down towards him. This is insanely cool! And especially cause we literally learned it in class this week, and then we step outside on a field trip and see it in action. Something I love so much about being here! We got to see plenty woodpeckers, and some smaller birds, as well as a bad eagle, bald eagle nest, AN OWL! I'm pretty sure it was a long eared owl, we saw some mountain bluebirds, some nuthatches.. The list goes on and on! No mammals though.. Oh, we also saw a ruffed grouse carrying out a mating dance! The COOLEST thing I have ever seen! They do this flapping of their wings and like dance in front of the female. It's insanely cool!
So all of this was done before 10am :P That's when we got back to campus. We had rangeland at 11am and Brady wasn't teaching the class today, so our TA Sarah took over and kicked off the presentations. We had 4 today and they were all on fire and herbivory which was grand. After class, we also got sent back our proposals that were peer reviewed by other class members. One of mine came back and the guy asked me what a waterfowl was.. I don't even know how to respond to that?! :/
We then went through the recreation behaviour peer review with Mike today. It went okay. I feel like I did alright but it's always so hard to tell over here. This evening, Fiona, Kate and I went to Walmart to get some food and Fiona got herself a second suitcase for going home.. Yes that time is drawing close! OH! We also got the fantastic news that Aoife is coming with us on the roadtrip back to New York!! YAY! So excited, it's going to be so much fun :P
Friday April 17th
Another cool genetics lecture again today! We got to watch more clips of David Attenborough, so naturally I wasn't going to complain :D I got home from college today just after 11am and went straight into finishing and posting last weeks blog and writing this weeks. I slacked on keeping up to date with it every day this week. Nevertheless, I got it all written up fairly lively :)
This evening, Fiona, Kate, Aoife, Sarah and I went to watch a bit of the Kyi-Yo PowWow on campus. It's basically a native american celebration involving singing and dancing! This was a competition though I think. Nevertheless, it was really interesting! So cool watching their dancing and how individuals make their own spin on things, it's cool!
After this, we went to Kate's for some cards against humanity! Probably my new favourite game! So we began and I didn't get off to a good start at the beginning, but before long I was on a roll and I ended up winning the game with 11 black cards :D
Saturday April 18th
An early start this Saturday morning! Up just after 9am to get ready to leave at 10am. We're going to Flathead today!! :D Met Kate and Bridget at Lewis and Clark and then collected Aoife on campus and we were off!
A 2 hour drive until we reached the northern point of the lake near Bigfork MT. We stayed around here for a while before heading down to Finley State Park. Down here, we had a lunch here and then we hopped into the water for a while. It was kinda chilly but you got used to it fairly quickly :P We did some sunbathing here cause the weather was CLASS. Fiona, Aoife, Kate and I walked over the beach a little bit to see if the osprey we saw back in August were still there. And we were in luck! The woman that lives on the property where their nest is, told us they returned yesterday so that was lucky! We watched them for a bit while they fixed up their nest after the bad winter.
We left Flathead at about 4pm, it was still lovely and warm out but we wanted to swing by the National Bison Range on our way home - and did we have a good time or what!
Within two minutes, we came across a herd of Bison.
We could also hear Western Meadowlark's all over the place and eventually spotted some. They're such pretty birds with a song that sounds like raindrops :P We saw White Tailed Deer, Pronghorn Antelope, some Red-Winged Blackbirds, Yellow-headed Blackbird, some male Mountain Bluebirds and also a hawk of some sort looking for food in the long grass. Basically - we saw a lot of animals! And it was amazing! We got home and stopped off in McDonald's for food cause we were all quite hungry.
Aoife then came over to ours this evening so we could get planning and booking our roadtrip to Queen's, NY. We got our motels/hostels booked. IT'S OFFICIAL!! WE'RE ROADTRIPPING ACROSS AMERICA!! Yay :D
Sunday April 19th
I had planned on sleeping in a little bit today but that didn't happen. I woke up early just because.. Today is going to consist of getting my work done for the week ahead as per usual I have rangeland ecology summaries to get done as well as genetics homework and two proposals - my ornithology and my rangeland ecology one. Fun times ahead!
So I got all my work done for today bar my ornithology proposal. Kate and Roger invited us out for a BBQ which was lovely :D Fiona, Sarah and I went and grabbed some food to bring with us - never go to a party empty handed!
We got back and that night, Fiona asked me to cut her hair.. I had told her before that I would if she wanted me to but I never thought she'd actually say yes! :P I have spent a number of summers watching my aunty cut hair and it always interested me! So, I chopped her hair and it turned out nice if I may say so myself :P I also blowdryed it, which my aunty has taught me to do before so that was pretty cool :D
That is essentially what my week consisted of.. A very random week mind you, but it was a lot of fun! I got to do plenty of bird watching, which I hate to admit is getting more fun each week! Next weekend will also be a fun one. Lots of good times with family and friends as well as more exam banter to look forward to!
Thank you again so much for reading my blog, I can't thank you guys enough!
- Shannen.
Today started off as any ordinary week would. I struggled to roll out of bed at 7am for my genetics lecture, but we were doing really interesting stuff this week! Sexual selection in animals, mainly birds and mammals. Pretty cool stuff! Ornithology essentially consisted of the same stuff as genetics but just bird orientated. So nothing too exciting today in college!
I got home and got working on a peer review paper that is due in this thursday for my recreation behaviour module. It's a tough one, essentially we have to go through a scientific journal and nit pick everything we can find wrong with it. I felt so cruel.
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| This was my set-up for doing the peer review.. |
Tuesday April 14th
I love my mini sleep in until 9.30am on Tuesdays. I cherish it now! :P Classes went on as usual today. In rangeland ecology, Brady (the lecturer seemed a little down). At the start of class he asked us all to take out a sheet of paper with our names on it - so naturally everyone got worried thinking we were getting one of these pop quiz things I see on TV. Nope. He asked us to write down three things we wouldn't sacrifice for our degree/career. He then told us to post these on our walls in our bedroom somewhere and to look at them often and not to forget about them.. We got a nice talk on how life basically does not get any easier the older you get and these things you're not willing to sacrifice will change too. Very deep and philosophical start to my Tuesday morning!
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| The UMT Clock Tower looking well today. |
All today I've had this weird blurry vision, which I've since put down to having a migraine. So yay for that!
Wednesday April 15th
Yeah today was another one of those days where I did not want to get out of bed. But I did. At 7am. As usual. Carried on with the usual stuff today, genetics, then ornithology and then my genetics lab. Nothing new and exciting to report unfortunately!
This afternoon I got to Facetime my cousin Courtney for a while, it was nice to catch up and we had a hilarious look back on old embarrassing photos of ourselves.. Typical! :P After this, I spent my whole evening working on the peer review for tomorrow and I submitted my two reviews for Rangeland Ecology and my rangeland summaries for tomorrow also. That's kind of all this evening consisted of really. I got to watch the new episode of Supernatural as well which was good - as always! :D
Thursday April 16th
Up at 6am this morning for a 7am field trip. It was freezing cold today with frost as well so I had my hat and gloves out. We got a lift to campus with Jamie again this morning - what a lifesaver she is! :D We headed up to an area called Blue Mountain, it's a popular recreational area that people bring their dogs [I know this because our recreation behaviour lecturer Libby complains about people who 1) don't pick up the dog crap and 2) put it in a bag but leave it there. And I got to see this first hand].
We saw so many cool birds!
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| The beautiful river down by Blue Mountain :) |
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| This was the only picture I was able to take, you can make out that the little grey blob is an owl :P |
We then went through the recreation behaviour peer review with Mike today. It went okay. I feel like I did alright but it's always so hard to tell over here. This evening, Fiona, Kate and I went to Walmart to get some food and Fiona got herself a second suitcase for going home.. Yes that time is drawing close! OH! We also got the fantastic news that Aoife is coming with us on the roadtrip back to New York!! YAY! So excited, it's going to be so much fun :P
Friday April 17th
Another cool genetics lecture again today! We got to watch more clips of David Attenborough, so naturally I wasn't going to complain :D I got home from college today just after 11am and went straight into finishing and posting last weeks blog and writing this weeks. I slacked on keeping up to date with it every day this week. Nevertheless, I got it all written up fairly lively :)
This evening, Fiona, Kate, Aoife, Sarah and I went to watch a bit of the Kyi-Yo PowWow on campus. It's basically a native american celebration involving singing and dancing! This was a competition though I think. Nevertheless, it was really interesting! So cool watching their dancing and how individuals make their own spin on things, it's cool!
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| This picture goes to show how colourful the whole event was! It was pretty class :) |
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| Some of the cards that I won in Cards Against Humanity :D |
An early start this Saturday morning! Up just after 9am to get ready to leave at 10am. We're going to Flathead today!! :D Met Kate and Bridget at Lewis and Clark and then collected Aoife on campus and we were off!
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| The Northern part of Flathead Lake :) |
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| Finley State Park :) |
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| One of the Osprey at Flathead. Photo credit to Kate Lowe - thank youuu :) |
Within two minutes, we came across a herd of Bison.
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| Traffic in Montana :P |
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| Thanks again to Kate Lowe for this stunning picture of the Western Meadowlark - The State Bird of Montana! |
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| The Roadtrip has been laid out!! :D |
Sunday April 19th
I had planned on sleeping in a little bit today but that didn't happen. I woke up early just because.. Today is going to consist of getting my work done for the week ahead as per usual I have rangeland ecology summaries to get done as well as genetics homework and two proposals - my ornithology and my rangeland ecology one. Fun times ahead!
So I got all my work done for today bar my ornithology proposal. Kate and Roger invited us out for a BBQ which was lovely :D Fiona, Sarah and I went and grabbed some food to bring with us - never go to a party empty handed!
We got back and that night, Fiona asked me to cut her hair.. I had told her before that I would if she wanted me to but I never thought she'd actually say yes! :P I have spent a number of summers watching my aunty cut hair and it always interested me! So, I chopped her hair and it turned out nice if I may say so myself :P I also blowdryed it, which my aunty has taught me to do before so that was pretty cool :D
That is essentially what my week consisted of.. A very random week mind you, but it was a lot of fun! I got to do plenty of bird watching, which I hate to admit is getting more fun each week! Next weekend will also be a fun one. Lots of good times with family and friends as well as more exam banter to look forward to!
Thank you again so much for reading my blog, I can't thank you guys enough!
- Shannen.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Week 27 - Spring break blues...
Monday April 6th
Happy birthday Laura! :)
Up bright and early for genetics and evolution today - 8am. Oh how I did not miss them, at all! Got my results back from the last exam, 88%! So naturally I was delighted seeing as the mean was a 79% I think? And the median was low 80's so yay! Then after an hour break had my ornithology lecture. We're learning about bird vocalizations at the moment so it's pretty cool! Kris has loads of cute video examples to show us as well so it's fun.
I got home and grabbed some lunch before heading off out to North Reserve so I could get some ink for our printer which appears to be out of ink yet again! This took about an hour out of my day with me getting stuck in traffic and whatnot.
This afternoon was very unproductive. I had spent my day yesterday doing my genetics take home exam which was due by today and also making head way on my rangeland proposal which is due for Thursday, I just didn't feel like doing anything. I tried to read my recreation behaviour paper but started failing miserably. I just couldn't concentrate :(
This evening, Kate and I went for a walk around the neighbourhood cause we both wanted to clear our heads. We came across a little school which had a playground so naturally we went and sat on the swings. I saw there was also a basketball court and a basketball (which was more like a stone) so we shot around for a while which was fun! I realized how bad I've become at basketball it's not cool...
Tuesday April 7th
HAPPY 21ST BIRTHDAY AV!!
Don't have college Tuesdays until 11am so that's always nice! Discovered in my rangeland class today that I have a presentation to do for Thursday - not fun! I also got back my exam which I got a 94% in! Which is a bit mad?! I also got my recreation behaviour result back and I got a 96% in that. WHAT EVEN IS HAPPENING?! Won't complain though, I put work into those exams (kinda) I would have wanted decent results..
So essentially when I got home from college today it was straight into work. I started on my presentation and by god did I get an awkward paper. 19 pages long and the weirdest methodology to it. I spent the evening doing this so unfortunately nothing too exciting.
I have also discovered that people from Russia enjoy reading my blog so hello to you lot! And there appears to me more USA viewers than Irish viewers, whattup with that?!
Wednesday April 8th
Today was another one of those busy days where I spent all day doing assignments. I had to correct my grant proposal for rangeland ecology with I set about doing first. Fiona proof read it for me so all I had to do was some minor adjustments and also proof read hers. I then went working on my summaries for rangeland that's also due for tomorrow. As well as my rangeland presentation.
And that was essentially all my day consisted of... Rangeland ecology ALL day long :P
Thursday April 9th
7am field trip this morning to Fort Missoula where we were learning to trap birds. We caught some House Sparrows and also some Juncos in some misnets. These nets are extremely hard to see so it's pretty easy to catch birds in them at the right time. We brought them inside and took some measurements on them like wing chord, mass and tarsus length.
After this I had an hour off where I kept reading over my presentation stuff cause I was presenting at 12pm. Brady asked who wanted to go first and I happily volunteered cause I wanted to get it over and done with. I wasn't nervous, and was able to talk calmly and clearly and kinda slow (I hope). So another job done! :D
Then had an hour and a half off before my recreation behaviour class, I had a paper to read for today so I tried my best to get this done during this time. I kind of got the idea of it so not too bad! We had a guest lecture for our rec behaviour lecture where we were learning about place meaning. Basically, what places mean to you and why this is so.
Fiona and I watched The Lion King tonight, I was in the mood to sing a long to something, and we both needed a good movie as a pick me up from how busy/stressful our day was..
Friday April 10th
8am genetics lecture, we're learning about natural selection and also adaptations so I'm really enjoying these lectures at the moment! :D This was followed by Ornithology which was the same ole craic.
Once we got home I put my washing on straight away. I put it off for far too long to the point where I had to use two washing machines to get all my stuff washed :/ While my washing was being done, I got to work cleaning all the dishes that had been put in the press that weren't cleaned properly - there was quite a number of them -_-. While I was at this, Fiona cleaned the counters and scrubbed the surface of the oven. The amount of grease that gathers here is gross. After I got the dishes scrubbed, I started on the bathroom. There was make-up all over the sink and toothpaste on the tap?! I don't even know.. So this was scrubbed and then I started on the toilet and the shower. The shower was the worst. It required some amount of scrubbing!
Our bin hadn't been taken out in like two weeks - and it's in a press that's right outside my bedroom door so I can actually smell it from my bedroom door. It's not my job to take the bin out since I do the cardboard recycling I have to drive over to campus to get rid of it, there was a decision made that I didn't have to take the bin out anymore. But not today - it was smelling so bad! I tried to take the bag out of the bin and no go. The damn thing was leaking.. I apologize for the detail but it wouldn't be a story without it :P Fiona did the hoovering of the apartment while I took the bin out and also washed it. I think the whole cleaning process took us well over an hour. It was spring cleaning round 2.
Fiona went off to work, and I tried to sit down and do some assignments but my head wasn't having any of it :P Friday didn't consist of anything too exciting Kate called over for a while and Fiona went through and checked all our motels we were looking into for the roadtrip back NEXT MONTH. Yep, I only have one month left in this beautiful state.
Saturday April 11th
Today began with no alarm being set, and it was beautiful. I did wake up at 8am but I forced myself back to sleep until 10am, not too bad. I got to work on my genetics homework and got it finished before getting on facetime to Mom and Aisling for a while.
Fiona, Kate and I went to the playground and played basketball for a while before the rain started. The sky was a lovely shade of dark grey so we decided to be wise about it and go home cause it looked like it was going to downpour. In the end it ended up not downpouring - oh well. The rest of the day just consisted of a whole pile of nothing really. I tried to do some rangeland ecology summaries but no good. I wasn't up to it, so Fiona and I put on some documentaries about animals so of course, we were happy out!
We also got planning our roadtrip some bit and looking into motels. When I say we I mean Fiona, since I'm doing the driving she's doing a lot of the planning so yay! :P
Sunday April 12th
So today began with finding out 4 of the new season 5 game of thrones episodes have been leaked and are online! WHAT TO DO! So naturally, we started to load up the first episode which took forever. So during this time, I worked on my rangeland ecology summaries. Then it was time. We watched episode 1 of game of thrones. AND I LOVED IT. I missed watching it, I think over the summer I'm going to binge watch seasons 1 through 4 again over the summer hopefully cause I watched them all bunched together I've forgotten people's names and what they look like already -_- hahaha.
We set out on an adventure to buy some toilet paper and then once we got back it was essentially time to get all the rangeland ecology summaries done. This week, we accidentally got landed with having to do four of them, which isn't exactly fun but the subject of this week is fire and the affects on herbivory and grazing, which is kinda cool!
Shannon text me today asking me over for dinner so I headed over before 6.30pm. Dan also came along so it was nice to all be reunited after Spring Break. We all chatted about how our different breaks went and how relaxing they were. It's nice to be back! We then sat down to an absolutely fabulous dinner, we had steak with a variety of vegetables to go with it! Today, they made me try beets and asparagus. I wasn't a fan of the beets but I did actually like the asparagus! We chatted for ages this evening, while having a good ole laugh and some delicious chocolate brownies Shannon baked! I also learned that she has a PhD in animal behaviour which is insanely cool! So naturally, I had to get her to explain it all to me - so fascinating! She also offered to dig up her Thesis so I can read through it seeing as my Final Year Project is an observation of the behaviour of primates! :D
Hey guys! So thanks again for reading this weeks post, I'm absolutely terrible for taking photos for my blog and stuff, I need to get back into the habitat of it, but weekdays are so busy we don't get to be as adventurous as we were last semester :P Still having an absolute blast here and I don't really want to leave especially since I've got a second family here now and some really good American friends. Next week, we're going to have a bit more of an exciting weekend though! We're going on a day trip, but I'm not going to tell you where to - that's cheating! :P
Thanks for reading!
- Shannen.
Happy birthday Laura! :)
Up bright and early for genetics and evolution today - 8am. Oh how I did not miss them, at all! Got my results back from the last exam, 88%! So naturally I was delighted seeing as the mean was a 79% I think? And the median was low 80's so yay! Then after an hour break had my ornithology lecture. We're learning about bird vocalizations at the moment so it's pretty cool! Kris has loads of cute video examples to show us as well so it's fun.
I got home and grabbed some lunch before heading off out to North Reserve so I could get some ink for our printer which appears to be out of ink yet again! This took about an hour out of my day with me getting stuck in traffic and whatnot.
This afternoon was very unproductive. I had spent my day yesterday doing my genetics take home exam which was due by today and also making head way on my rangeland proposal which is due for Thursday, I just didn't feel like doing anything. I tried to read my recreation behaviour paper but started failing miserably. I just couldn't concentrate :(
This evening, Kate and I went for a walk around the neighbourhood cause we both wanted to clear our heads. We came across a little school which had a playground so naturally we went and sat on the swings. I saw there was also a basketball court and a basketball (which was more like a stone) so we shot around for a while which was fun! I realized how bad I've become at basketball it's not cool...
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| Two female white tail deer munching on someone's lawn while we were at the playground. Haven't spotted these guys around and about the place in ages! |
Tuesday April 7th
HAPPY 21ST BIRTHDAY AV!!
Don't have college Tuesdays until 11am so that's always nice! Discovered in my rangeland class today that I have a presentation to do for Thursday - not fun! I also got back my exam which I got a 94% in! Which is a bit mad?! I also got my recreation behaviour result back and I got a 96% in that. WHAT EVEN IS HAPPENING?! Won't complain though, I put work into those exams (kinda) I would have wanted decent results..
So essentially when I got home from college today it was straight into work. I started on my presentation and by god did I get an awkward paper. 19 pages long and the weirdest methodology to it. I spent the evening doing this so unfortunately nothing too exciting.
I have also discovered that people from Russia enjoy reading my blog so hello to you lot! And there appears to me more USA viewers than Irish viewers, whattup with that?!
Wednesday April 8th
Today was another one of those busy days where I spent all day doing assignments. I had to correct my grant proposal for rangeland ecology with I set about doing first. Fiona proof read it for me so all I had to do was some minor adjustments and also proof read hers. I then went working on my summaries for rangeland that's also due for tomorrow. As well as my rangeland presentation.
And that was essentially all my day consisted of... Rangeland ecology ALL day long :P
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| This was the title page of my presentation that I finished making today/tonight! |
7am field trip this morning to Fort Missoula where we were learning to trap birds. We caught some House Sparrows and also some Juncos in some misnets. These nets are extremely hard to see so it's pretty easy to catch birds in them at the right time. We brought them inside and took some measurements on them like wing chord, mass and tarsus length.
After this I had an hour off where I kept reading over my presentation stuff cause I was presenting at 12pm. Brady asked who wanted to go first and I happily volunteered cause I wanted to get it over and done with. I wasn't nervous, and was able to talk calmly and clearly and kinda slow (I hope). So another job done! :D
Then had an hour and a half off before my recreation behaviour class, I had a paper to read for today so I tried my best to get this done during this time. I kind of got the idea of it so not too bad! We had a guest lecture for our rec behaviour lecture where we were learning about place meaning. Basically, what places mean to you and why this is so.
Fiona and I watched The Lion King tonight, I was in the mood to sing a long to something, and we both needed a good movie as a pick me up from how busy/stressful our day was..
Friday April 10th
8am genetics lecture, we're learning about natural selection and also adaptations so I'm really enjoying these lectures at the moment! :D This was followed by Ornithology which was the same ole craic.
Once we got home I put my washing on straight away. I put it off for far too long to the point where I had to use two washing machines to get all my stuff washed :/ While my washing was being done, I got to work cleaning all the dishes that had been put in the press that weren't cleaned properly - there was quite a number of them -_-. While I was at this, Fiona cleaned the counters and scrubbed the surface of the oven. The amount of grease that gathers here is gross. After I got the dishes scrubbed, I started on the bathroom. There was make-up all over the sink and toothpaste on the tap?! I don't even know.. So this was scrubbed and then I started on the toilet and the shower. The shower was the worst. It required some amount of scrubbing!
Our bin hadn't been taken out in like two weeks - and it's in a press that's right outside my bedroom door so I can actually smell it from my bedroom door. It's not my job to take the bin out since I do the cardboard recycling I have to drive over to campus to get rid of it, there was a decision made that I didn't have to take the bin out anymore. But not today - it was smelling so bad! I tried to take the bag out of the bin and no go. The damn thing was leaking.. I apologize for the detail but it wouldn't be a story without it :P Fiona did the hoovering of the apartment while I took the bin out and also washed it. I think the whole cleaning process took us well over an hour. It was spring cleaning round 2.
Fiona went off to work, and I tried to sit down and do some assignments but my head wasn't having any of it :P Friday didn't consist of anything too exciting Kate called over for a while and Fiona went through and checked all our motels we were looking into for the roadtrip back NEXT MONTH. Yep, I only have one month left in this beautiful state.
Saturday April 11th
Today began with no alarm being set, and it was beautiful. I did wake up at 8am but I forced myself back to sleep until 10am, not too bad. I got to work on my genetics homework and got it finished before getting on facetime to Mom and Aisling for a while.
Fiona, Kate and I went to the playground and played basketball for a while before the rain started. The sky was a lovely shade of dark grey so we decided to be wise about it and go home cause it looked like it was going to downpour. In the end it ended up not downpouring - oh well. The rest of the day just consisted of a whole pile of nothing really. I tried to do some rangeland ecology summaries but no good. I wasn't up to it, so Fiona and I put on some documentaries about animals so of course, we were happy out!
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| The playground of Lewis and Clark School. |
Sunday April 12th
So today began with finding out 4 of the new season 5 game of thrones episodes have been leaked and are online! WHAT TO DO! So naturally, we started to load up the first episode which took forever. So during this time, I worked on my rangeland ecology summaries. Then it was time. We watched episode 1 of game of thrones. AND I LOVED IT. I missed watching it, I think over the summer I'm going to binge watch seasons 1 through 4 again over the summer hopefully cause I watched them all bunched together I've forgotten people's names and what they look like already -_- hahaha.
We set out on an adventure to buy some toilet paper and then once we got back it was essentially time to get all the rangeland ecology summaries done. This week, we accidentally got landed with having to do four of them, which isn't exactly fun but the subject of this week is fire and the affects on herbivory and grazing, which is kinda cool!
Shannon text me today asking me over for dinner so I headed over before 6.30pm. Dan also came along so it was nice to all be reunited after Spring Break. We all chatted about how our different breaks went and how relaxing they were. It's nice to be back! We then sat down to an absolutely fabulous dinner, we had steak with a variety of vegetables to go with it! Today, they made me try beets and asparagus. I wasn't a fan of the beets but I did actually like the asparagus! We chatted for ages this evening, while having a good ole laugh and some delicious chocolate brownies Shannon baked! I also learned that she has a PhD in animal behaviour which is insanely cool! So naturally, I had to get her to explain it all to me - so fascinating! She also offered to dig up her Thesis so I can read through it seeing as my Final Year Project is an observation of the behaviour of primates! :D
Hey guys! So thanks again for reading this weeks post, I'm absolutely terrible for taking photos for my blog and stuff, I need to get back into the habitat of it, but weekdays are so busy we don't get to be as adventurous as we were last semester :P Still having an absolute blast here and I don't really want to leave especially since I've got a second family here now and some really good American friends. Next week, we're going to have a bit more of an exciting weekend though! We're going on a day trip, but I'm not going to tell you where to - that's cheating! :P
Thanks for reading!
- Shannen.
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