The End of an Era....

Monday May 11th

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!

My thoughts on finals week....

 This evening consisted of packing. And lots of it. I threw out a black bag of clothes and rubbish from my room! Nothing makes me feel better than cleaning shit up :P It's stress relief to me hahaha. I took down all but two of my posters, but my room is so clean now, I actually have a floor! WHO KNEW?! I was ruthless with the clothes I was throwing out.. If I hadn't worn them, or just wore them too much, they were dumped. My wardrobe is now considerably lighter but I still have a lot of stuff to bring home! Oh well :P Fiona and I also called over to Kate for a while for chats. No study done today! I was taking a well deserved break :)

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

My much loved, but very worn converse </3

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!

The very clean kitchen :D

This evening, a bunch of us went out to dinner at the Iron Horse, this was the restaurant a bunch of us went on one of our first days here in Missoula. I got the Bison and Elk burger seeing as the further east I go, the less often I'll be able to find Bison burgers in restaurants. For anyone coming here, I would definitely recommend getting the Bison and Elk burger! :) We were all so hungry, I think our food was no longer put on the table than it was all gobbled up :P Everyone really enjoyed it.

Bison and Elk burger with sweet potato fries :)

 On our way home, we stopped by my Missoula families house as it was my time to say goodbye. But ONLY FOR TWO MONTHS! So happy it's not proper goodbye just yet seeing as they're coming to Ireland in two months time :D Shannon had made an incredible chocolate cake for dessert. Kate, Siobhan, Aoife and Fiona all stopped by with me and we had some great chats! After much chats about how the whole year went and what out favourite moments were, we got talking about our roadtrip. Seeing as we overestimated how big my car actually is, we were kind of caught for space and Craig asked me if I had a roof rack on my car, which I do. He offered me a roof box storage thingy that they've never used before which they got from a friend. I was so shocked - how incredibly nice?! I wasn't sure if we would need it but it turns out we kind of did..
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!

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