Happy 21st Birthday Amy!
Today I had to hand in an assignment for my Wildlife Physiology class first. We also got the results back from our exam last week, I got 80% which I have quickly learned isn't a great grade here. It was my first exam though and I have the chance to drop it as only four out of our five exams in this class count as credit. Yay!
For our Introduction to Perch Compliance assignment we just had to email it in to either Kris or Bret. They are trying to move away from paper so they find with such a small class of only 11 people, emailing it in is quite sufficient. After class we then have our lab, today we were doing comparative dissections. We all did different animals such as, two fish, a stingray, a turtle, a frog, a salamander and a shark. Fiona and I chose the frog, which I really didn't want to do because I love frogs and I was quite happy not knowing what's on the inside. But we did anyways, and he was pretty cool. His skin was awesome the amount of capillaries on the under side of his skin was amazing. We soon discovered he had an amazing assortment of muscles and the ones on his legs were huge for all his jumping. We all then taught the next about the different muscles on the animals we dissected.
We just came home and relaxed for a while because thankfully, we have no assignments due in this week it makes a change! We decided after a while of blogging we'd go up the mountain behind Lewis and Clark to do some deer watching for one of our assignments for our habitat and management class. For this class, we have to do roughly 6 hours of watching a vertebrate animal of our choice, so Fiona and I chose an animal that's common around these parts and easy to watch for 6 hours - White Tailed Deer. Obviously not 6 hours in one day, we're going to do it over a number of days. We then met up with Eoghan and went to Walmart and on our way back we stopped off in Big Dipper and treated ourselves to Ice Cream!
 |
| The sunset while we were deer watching. Gorgeous. |
Tuesday September 23rd
Just another usual day on campus, had Conservation and Management with our guest speaker. He spoke to us about populations in Elk and the factors affecting their growth and survival. The biggest factor affecting Elk populations is in fact humans. This is because the Elk have been hunted out of the prairie lands where they do very well and they have plenty of food availability in order for humans to farm. They have instead moved to the mountainous areas where the food would not be as good quality for them to live off and feed young off also. Humans have more of an impact than wolves and also surprisingly, grizzly bears also have more of an impact on Elk than wolves do. Really interesting stuff!
We got home and had a quick lunch before heading off to Southgate Mall to try and get some warmer clothes for the cold weather we are expected to get. We also got Roxiberry frozen yoghurt while we were here, I just love it! Unfortunately, they don't have their more winter stuff out yet as the weather here is still quite warm. Pity because this is a nice quiet week for me with no assignments to do, yet! I'll have to try and sit down and possibly do some study so I won't get too lazy about college work I guess!
 |
| Roxiberry Frozen Yoghurt <3 |
Wednesday September 24th
Just another average day at college today. Had my Wildlife Phys. class and we found out that we have no class this friday, yay! Had vertebrate design and evolution then afterwards, nothing major to report here.
This evening, Fiona and I set off out again deer watching for our Conservation and Management class. We sat and watched a small family of deer for ages with the younger ones getting all inquisitive it was cute watching them slowly approach us. We were sat behind a fence though so they couldn't get too close!
 |
| Watching the deer through a camera for close up action. |
 |
| Happy out after our mini-hike deer watching! |
We watched some more of the Frozen Planet documentaries tonight again, educating ourselves a little better haha.
Thursday September 25th
Today I got to catch up with my sister before heading to college. Went in for another guest lecture in Conservation and Management. I went to the Griz Store on campus after class and got myself my first Grizz football t-shirt, a hoodie and temporary face tattoos also for the Homecoming game I'm going to be attending on Saturday afternoon!
Getting quite excited about it now.
I had a splitting headache this evening but I got to talk to Av and Kisha from home, getting all the news and just having a catch up. Didn't really do anything that exciting today, just messed about the place and took a spin to Walmart with Dave tonight cause I needed to get stuff for breakfast and he had to do food shopping also.
Friday September 26th
Seeing as my 12pm class was cancelled I didn't have anything on until 1.30 pm today which was delightful. I still got up early though cause I was dropping my friend home from the dentist after he got his wisdom teeth out. Only a couple of blocks away too so that was handy! Met Sofia at Lewis and Clark at 1.15 ish and then collected Fiona on our way to the Field Research Station. We made our way out there and ended up being the first to arrive even though we were five minutes late! We broke up into our different research groups and started on the assignment given to us by Bret and Kris, where we got to work with the equipment and learn how to use it and whatnot, which was pretty cool!
Finished up and headed home then, both Fiona and I didn't feel like cooking a dinner today, and see as it's a Friday we said we'd go for something to eat somewhere, so we got Dave and I brought them to Wendy's for the first time. We got dinner here and then very cheekily got Dairy Queen after visiting the Liquor Store/Casino to get spirits for the homecoming game tomorrow.
We were wrecked tired and had to be up early in the morning so it was an early night for us after watching another episode of the Frozen Planet tonight.
 |
| Wendys, my favorite fast food restaurant! |
Saturday September 27th
HOMECOMING!!
So I got up at like 7am because we had to be in town at 8.30am and we didn't know if we would have to walk all the way in or if there would be a taxi at this hour of the morning that we could get. Luckily, there was taxis so we got one of these to town to meet up with the others that will be on our float for the parade.
 |
| Big sleepy head on me, all excited for homecoming! |
I was all decked out in my Griz gear and my Irish flag for the Study Abroad float. We hopped on our float a bit after 8.30 am and we then headed into the line up for the parade, everyone was holding flags from various countries. We then began shortly after 10 am. We drove through Missoula town before heading out towards the University. After 5 minutes of sitting on the float I decided to hop off and run/walk next to it handing out stickers/cards and blow up globes to little children who were standing on the side of the street. It was so much fun!
 |
| All decked out with my Irish flag. |
Afterwards, we went to Shannon and Craig's house for an absolutely amazing BBQ to provide some soakage before we started our drinking for the homecoming football game. We left around 1pm for the game after saying our many thank yous for the lovely spread of food. We found a place to stand and watched some of the game. The Grizzlies were doing really well and it didn't look like there was going to be a change in the game so instead we left early and went to Stacey's dorm room and played some drunken jenga, essentially jenga with Kings rules written on every block. Around 4.30/5 pm we all headed back to Lewis and Clark, Fiona and I went in home for some food first then we all met up at Fabien's house for some predrinking. Went to town about 8.30/9 ish (really early!!). Had such a good night! Really gutted a lot of the International Students that are out here now are only going to be here for one semester. It's not fair!
Sunday September 28th
A lot of Sunday was spent sleeping. Both Dave and I took a shopping trip to Walmart alright in th evening time but I spent it working on blog and starting/finishing an array of assignments I have due this week. Nothing too major happened as per my usual Sundays.
Sorry this weeks post is a bit later than usual. I've been up the walls with college assignments that I haven't got much of a chance to sort my blog out. I'm now going to upload on Tuesdays instead of Mondays as my timetable is a lot better on a Tuesday allowing me to be able to post up at an earlier time. Next week is basically just all assignments/exams. Very busy! We have our first weekend off in ages where we're going to take yet another trip to the National Bison Range hopefully!
Thanks for reading!
- Shannen
