Labor day! This means no classes - whoooo! Got up nice and early today to finish off a very painful assignment on finding five definitions of conservation and comparing and contrasting them. Rotten to say the least, it took both Fiona and I hours of searching through sites to try and find some half decent papers that would be worth using. We decided, seeing it was labor day, we should go and do something fun. So at 12 pm we headed off on another road trip which was about an hour away to the National Bison Range outside Dixon MT. We had no idea what to expect today but it was somewhere both of us wanted to visit. Dave went rafting with the International Students and Elliot and Siobhan were both working so it was just Fiona and I for the day! I turned on Waze, the Sat Nav., on my phone and we headed off. About an hour later we arrived here and had only just pulled in the gate when we got to see a herd of Elk - great start to our day!
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| The herd of Elk with the young male. |
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| The older and larger male that was wandering off from the herd. |
We drove up to the visitor center to see what our options for the day were. We could get a day pass for $5 or a season pass which would allow as many trips to the Bison Range during the year for only $15, so we went with that option seeing as it would make for a nice day out if we were day at home doing nothing! We had a look around the tourist center, took some pictures and headed off on our journey. We spotted herds of bison on the hills but none very near to us at the beginning of our journey. Also within the first half an hour there were pretty high chances of spotting a black momma bear with her cubs if we had a good look around the trees with berries. Literally, any tree with any berry at all on it we parked up beside it and stared at it and the surroundings to find any chance of seeing a black bear - but no luck! It was quite a hot day also so we reckon she was keeping them in the shade. We did, however, spot some Pronghorn Antelope chilling out and munching on some grass.
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| Pronghorn Antelope. |
We also spotted some Mule Deer, you can tell these are mule deer because they have white bottoms and a thin tail with a black tip.
There was a lot of White Tailed Deer also. The main way to tell the difference between Mule Deer and White Tailed Deer is their antlers and their tails. In Mule Deer their antlers are forked and they have white bottoms with a thin tail. White Tailed Deer have antlers that only have one branch with a few branching off that one main branch.
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| A male White Tailed Deer. |
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| A young very cute White Tailed Deer. |
We continued our drive up some switchback trails up a mountain until we came across the Bitterroot Trail. This wasn't a proper hiking trail as it was only 1/4 mile but it had an absolutely magnificent view! We sat here and ate our lunch while looking down on some particularly stunning scenery.
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| Questioning life's mysteries as I look down on the valley. |
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| A selfie with the Bitterroot Valley as the backdrop. Not too shabby! |
Once we had our lunch eaten we continued our drive along the one-way road system to the highest point on the range at 4,700 feet. The view from up here was spectacular, we stopped for a bathroom break and then continued our journey on a 100 foot gradual descent down the gravel road.
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| The view of the gorgeous valley and the Mission Mountains in the distance. |
Being the National Bison Range, we didn't actually see too many bison. I did, however, get a picture of a herd of bison munching on food on the hills. These guys are HUGE.
We headed home after this and made it back to Lewis and Clark about 5.30 pm. We collected Elliot, Dave and Siobhan and went to Best Buy to buy a printer between us because printing out all our notes in college is quite expensive and this is a more cost effective way to survive the year. We bought a very good printer, 5,000 sheets of paper and two ink cartridges all for only $25 each! If i may say so myself, not a bad deal at all!
There is an ice cream shop around here called The Big Dipper and it's kind of a big deal so we drove over there this evening to try it out. The ice cream here is unreal and for the amount you get it's such a cheap deal too! I got a double scoop (did not expect it to have so much ice cream!) of vanilla oreo and chocolate chip.
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| Vanilla Orea Ice Cream with Chocolate. |
Tuesday September 2nd
I woke up nice and early this morning (about 9am) although, I do try to get up around this time every morning even though classes don't start for me until 12 pm, it helps me sleep better at night. I got the chance to FaceTime home for a while for a chat and also to wish my little dog a very Happy 11th Birthday. I miss my dog so much I didn't think it would be this hard. I eventually got registered for my home college this morning as well - very productive so far.
Went in for my class at 12 pm. We all handed in our first assignment of the year and carried on with class straight away. We started learning the different definitions for Wildlife, Conservation and Management as well as comparing these and also comparing various different definitions. We got given a reading assignment of reading two scientific journals for our next class which is Thursday morning. Dr. Dreitz ran through the various databases where we can access specific journals for wildlife related topics which would be helpful to us for future assignments.
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| The Forestry Building where I have my Wildlife Habitat Conservation and Management classes. |
This was my only class for the day so I was home by 1.30 pm. I checked my post box and my full drivers license had arrived! No more learner permit for me!! I made lunch and did my clothes washing. In Lewis and Clark, it's $1.50 to wash your clothes and $0.25 for every 15 minutes you use the dryer to dry your clothes. Not a bad deal really, but I don't find them to be all that great. Seeing as I was pretty busy with my first week of classes I haven't had a chance to properly organize and tidy up my room so I took this free time to do so. I put away all my laundry and hung up everything that needed to be hung up. I organized my desk some what - not very well (I tried okay ...). I then sat down to start a reading assignment for my Vertebrate Design and Evolution class which was reading a paper on Phylogeny. This paper made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. I'm hoping I'm not going to be the only one in the class with this problem. I made an unreal dinner of roasted garlic potato cubes with fried chicken and red and green peppers, red onion, regular onion, peas and sweet corn, also all seasoned with garlic. If you can't tell - I'm quite the fan of garlic! I spent the rest of this evening just relaxing and chatting with Fiona and Sarah, while both Fiona and I worked on our blogs a little bit
Wednesday September 3rd
Woke up early again today and read one of my homework assignments to see if I could make sense of it a second time around and no luck. It was jibberish! I went to my first class of the day - Wildlife Physiological Ecology - where we had a catch up lecture from last Friday on homeostasis: something I had already covered in Ireland so I had a one up on the American students for once! We also discussed the way in which Dr. Breuner wants us to carry out our group assignments. Our whole class is divided up into groups of four in which we sit with and work with them throughout the year. The people in my group are really friendly, Robin, Tyler and Mike. We had out first mini group assignment where we interpreted a graph from the overhead projector, and noted our results. Dr. Breuner then called on a random group (not ours for today) and to explain what findings we gathered. From here I walked with Joe to our next class, Vertebrate Design and Evolution. I was only too delighted to hear that he also couldn't understand the assigned Scientific Journal we had to read. Once we arrived to class, we were relieved to hear that nobody really gathered the concept of what was being discussed. Bret our lecturer did tell us it was a bit advanced but he wanted to give us a bit of a challenge. We then began to discuss the main principles and ideas in the paper by using examples on the board. This class finished up at 2.30 pm so both Fiona and I headed straight home, I began to start one of our homework assignments that is due for this Friday. We have to draw a simple cladogram and then choose from 1)vertebral column 2) pectoral girdle 3)pelvic girdle or 4)limbs and explain how each of these have evolved and changed over time. Not all as bad as it seems really!
Every time someone in the apartment cooks in the oven it sets off the fire alarms here. We're not terrible cooks and there's no smoke in the apartment! We went down to the office to ask them what the story was and what we should do. So basically, the first solution was to change all the batteries in all FIVE fire alarms in the apartment, which we have now done. So all we do is wait until tomorrow to see if someone sets the alarm off. It's quite the nuisance also because you have to wave a towel frantically at the fire alarms to wave any 'smoke' away to shut the damn things off. Not sure if this actually works seeing as there is no smoke. It a mystery if you ask me :P Tried to work on the assignments I have due in for this Friday this evening, they're so tough! And I also have two scientific papers to read for tomorrow mornings class..
Thursday September 4th
So I woke up at a reasonable hour again this morning seeing as I fell asleep about 11 pm last night I was as fresh as a daisy. I read the two scientific journals on habitats for my class at 12 pm. Went to class where we discussed these papers a little bit and then I came home. I finally got around to catching up with Av at home and getting all the news and that and after that I FaceTimed my Mom for a bit to chat to her and get the news off her also. I then settled down to try and do my assignments after eating some lunch. Fiona and Elliot arrived over at 5.30 pm ish and I had not made much progress on these assignments. Lewis and Clark held a welcome back BBQ for all residents this evening also which was really nice and they also had a raffle to win some prizes which included items for the apartment. We all had our burgers, hotdogs, taytos, watermelon and potato salad before sitting down and doing some drawings on the sheets of paper laid out on the tables in front of us. Each table was provided with colors, for what purpose we were not exactly sure but we went with it and did some 'artistic' work and marked our territory as being Irish too! We sat around and had chats for a while, a lot of people are heading out tonight but unfortunately I have an exam and two assignments due in tomorrow so myself and Fiona headed home about 7 pm to work on these.
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| Free food at the Welcome BBQ. |
I was finding myself falling asleep while trying to finish off my Vertebrate Design and Evolution assignment so I decided to walk to the gas station and pick up a can of Red Bull to keep me awake and motivated. Now I just have to sit down and learn the bones in the cat body as well as all the little lumps and bumps that are on each bone for the quiz tomorrow. It's not that easy! And Fiona and I worked with our classmate, Lillia, last Friday in deciphering the bones but right now it doesn't seem to be that easy to recall them...
Friday September 5th
So today I had to wake up early and finish off my assignment for my Wildlife Physiological Ecology module. For some reason, I was better able to understand the graph I was to do my write up on today - rather then yesterday. Fiona sent me a text that she was in the Zoology lab with one of our classmates, Joe, going over the bones of the cat for our quiz today. I got the U Dash into college and met up with them to do some studying at about 9:30 am.
My Wildlife Physiological Ecology class started at 12 pm. In my group of four, Tyler and I did graph one, while Robin and Mike did graph two. The way Dr. Breuner works these exercises is for Tyler and I to discuss what our findings from the graph were and to make sure we were on the same page, while Robin and Mike discussed their ideas on their graph. We then all formed our groupings together and taught each other the two graphs. Then Dr. Breuner called on one group to teach their thoughts on the graph to the class. No body from my group was picked today, but someday we will be picked. In the University of Montana, they are big into public speaking and interactions between the classes so they really try to reinforce it.
My next class is when I was having my bone test at 1:30 pm. I walked over to the Health Science Building and some of the guys in my class were already sitting outside the classroom looking over the bones. More and more people from my class started filing in. Soon we were all chatting about bones, and mocking the Irish - this seems to be the all time favorite thing to do. When Kris arrived we all went into the lab and sat down to start the quiz. I honestly thought this quiz was going to be so tough, I was seriously nervous simply because there was so many bones to learn! Kris gave each of us out Index cards where we had to write our names and student numbers on and on the back benches in the classroom she had the different bones laid out with arrows on them. We then all walked freely around them, looking at each one and each labelled part, we wrote down what we thought was right. Kris also had one extra credit question with two parts - allowing us to redeem ourselves some bit if we got one of the questions wrong. Once everyone had their index cards handed up, Kris ran through the answers, turned out I only got two out of the six wrong with wasn't all that bad for my first quiz! I think a lot of people were on the same boat so everyone was happy.
We then moved onto looking at Vertebrate skulls. We had our lab handouts and we began trudging through all the terminology and looking and identifying the different parts of the skulls. Only to ask Kris for help when we were stuck on something. We looked at a Mountain Lion skull, Alligator, Fish, Loggerhead Turtle and Human. Pretty cool and so very relaxed. I do love this class.
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| Mountain Lion skull. |
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| The Fish skull we looked at. |
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| The Alligator skull and I. |
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| Me and the incredibly heavy and huge Loggerhead Turtle skull. |
We came home from our lab and had some dinner. The University have their own theater where they show two movies every weekend. This weekend the movies were Maleficient and Godzilla. A group of the International Students all wanted to go and see Maleficient, so we did at 7:30pm. The tickets in were only $3 and a large popcorn was $3 and a fizzy drink (soda) was only $1. Such good value! And a brilliant movie! I don't actually like Angelina Jolie but she was absolutely fantastic in this movie and it took such a brilliant twist also. A must see for any Disney heads out there! Siobhan, Elliot and I then went out to Walmart to stock up on food for our trip tomorrow :D
Saturday September 6th
We had a 5:30 am rise this morning to make sure we were well prepared for the bus at 6:30 am where we started our journey to Glacier National Park. We met up with the other bus load at the International House and began our 3 hour journey to Glacier. Mostly people either slept or just chatted on the way up and Mary from the Foreign Student and Scholar Services was a brilliant tour guide giving us all the historical information on our journey whenever it was required. We drove along the East Coast of Flathead Lake - which I had already done the Saturday beforehand but I didn't get to appreciate the scenery as much because I was driving so I took the time to appreciate it today. We also chatted to her ourselves about the different things we were interested in.
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| The BEES students from UCC with a beautiful backdrop. |
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| Speaks for itself really, it's gorgeous here. |
We arrived at Glacier and first went to the souvenir shops by Lake McDonald. We pottered around here for a bit then boarded the buses again up to Trail of the Cedars - such a gorgeous little trail. From here we had a picnic lunch by a little creek which was absolutely fabulous and poor Dervla had this massive beetle land on her leg and pretty much scared everyone with the size of him! We boarded the buses back up again at 1:30 pm and headed down to get on the famous Red Bus Tour! We made sure to get all on the same bus together. We being - all the Europeans, one New Zealander and two Japanese girls.
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| Trail of the Cedars. |
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| UCC students perched on a log at Trail of the Cedars. |
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| A panorama of the creek we sat by for lunch. |
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| All the Europeans in the Red Jammer Tour! |
Our journey began and our tour guide Steve was fantastic, he talked the whole journey about the historical geological features in the park giving us some fascinating information. Below are a variety of the pictures I took along the tour of Going to the Sun Road.
We drove along Going to the Sun Road which finishes off at Logan Pass, at an altitude of 6,646ft the views were phenomenal! I wouldn't be able to write enough words to do our trip justice. The views were just spectacular and very disappointingly we didn't get to see any wildlife on our trip apart from a ground squirrel which wasn't very impressing...
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| One of the views at Logans Pass. |
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| The absolutely spectaculer view at Lake McDonald Lodge. |
One of the buses we were on had to be jump started so we had to wait 15 minutes for this to happen before we could leave. We left Glacier at about 7:40 pm. We were stopping for dinner on our way home, in Charlie Wong's in Kalispell a Chinese restaurant. I wasn't too pleased that this was the choice of dinner we had as I don't like or eat Chinese food. There was also only a set menu to choose from so I couldn't just simply order a plate of rice and curry. I ordered the Chicken Chow Mein which came with a good portion of rice, sweet and sour chicken, noodles and some weird vegetables that I didn't even try.
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| My dinner minus the Egg Roll which Elliot gladly ate. |
I slowly picked at it but left a lot of it behind me. I'm lucky I packed extra sandwiches just incase I didn't like where we were stopping for dinner. We left here and began our journey home again. I think pretty much everyone fell asleep on the bus home until Mary woke us up about 10 minutes outside of Missoula. We got dropped off right at Lewis and Clark at about 11:30 pm. I got in home, checked on what the Internet was doing all day (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram) and then I crashed just after 12 am.
Sunday September 7th
An absolutely fantastic lazy day was had today. I woke at 11:30 am. I had breakfast and then FaceTimed my Mom for a while. After this, I began tidying my room. I did a load of washing and arranged my study desk and my wardrobe. Dave called up for a while and filled me in on the crazy day he had yesterday at the first Grizzlies home game - they won too so it was great! I also showed him what he missed out on in Glacier National Park. He stayed for about 3 hours just chatting then he went home and I cooked my dinner and watched some videos on YouTube. I then retreated to my room where I finally watched the season finale of Pretty Little Liars! WOW. Soon after, Sarah arrived home from her weekend away so I helped her bring the TV up to the sitting room and I connected it up and set the channels up. We get 69 cable channels here in Lewis and Clark compared to only having 13 in Farranlea in Cork last year with half of them not being any good or not even working. We have another test for Vertebrate Design and Evolution on the skull tomorrow evening so I spent the night learning the skull and also trying to finish up my blog post. I was really excited to start writing a blog but it takes a lot of time and seeing as our workload here is so high it's also quite hard to find the time to be able to just sit down and type for a while. Nevertheless though I will keep it up because I enjoy it and I also feel it will be nice to look back on when this year is finished. I had to call over to Dave and Elliot's to print off class notes, timetables and assignments which were due in for this week. Went home and started learning my skull for my second class quiz tomorrow!
This week was a crazy busy week so I apologize for bombarding with pictures! Next week I get to meet my Missoula International Friendship Program family and also go on our first field trip with college!
Thanks for reading and I hope you're enjoying the posts so far!
- Shannen.
