A Brief Catch Up!

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! 

Semester 2 has begun here in Missoula and I am loving being back here!! I apologize for not uploading my last two weeks in Missoula from before Christmas break. Once I got to New York I thought I would have had time to post it, and I didn't. And then once I got back home to Ireland it was non stop going! This post is just going to be a catch up of everything so it's going to be a little bit of everything that happened between my last two weeks in Missoula, to my time in New York, to my 4.5 weeks at home, and my travels back to the states again. It's going to be a long one, but the pictures are worth it



Missoula
Basically to sum it all up, my last two weeks in Missoula was spent studying for my final exams, preparing presentations and writing papers. In two nights, I wrote two separate 14 page papers, pretty impressive I know! About two weeks or so after getting home I got my exam results, A, A- and B. I also passed my Hunter Check Station class, would be hard not to when my paper turned out to be at 14 pages right?! I got a B in my Vertebrate Design and Evolution class which was pretty incredible considering how I was doing in that class at the start of the semester.. Got an A in my Wildlife Physiological Ecology class so YAY, and the A- was in my Wildlife Habitat Conservation and Management class. So overall, I'm a pretty happy camper! We had our farewell dinner for Elliot and James during this week also. The last supper of the Bison Bunch...for now....


New York
Christmas break was just brilliant. First I was in New York for a couple of days, my Dad brought me to see the Radio City Christmas Show - brilliant! And then we wandered around Manhattan so I could get to see 'Christmas in New York'. VERY different to the New York I'm used to seeing every summer when it's blazing hot and you can't walk a few steps without wanting to pass out from heat stroke.. I got to see the famous Rockefeller tree which was gorgeous! And we also took a walk into St. Patrick's Cathedral. That night I got a message from one of the guys in my college course saying he had a 13hr (I think) layover in JFK airport between his flights home and he wanted to meet up and see New York. So at about 9.30 am I met Tadhg in Times Square and we walked to Central Park, Times Square (of course), Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central and also the Rockefeller tree too.

Radio City Christmas Show :D

The famous Rockefeller Tree.

I forgot to mention meeting Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, the actor who plays Nidge from Love/Hate while we were strolling around Times Square. Also, if you're Irish and don't know this man, shame on you!

Brooklyn Bridge :)

Grand Central Station -  a lot quieter now than in the summer time.

Ireland
My flight home was the next evening.. Mom and Aisling collected Dad and I from the airport.. Everyday / night while I was at home, I was doing something different with family / friends / cousins. The reunion between me and my dog though was probably the cutest thing ever. He couldn't stop smiling and also following me around everywhere that I went for the first week. I think he was afraid I was going to leave him again :P Every night we were calling to somebody else's house and having food/drinks or card games. Between my Mom's side of the family and my Dad's side, it really was brilliant! Especially having the American cousins home for the Christmas too :D

Got to spend a week in Cork with all my college friends while I was hopping from one house to the other, thank you to my hosts, Nicole, Av and my sister, Aisling, for putting up with me! I got to speak to some of my lecturers when I got home and they were delighted to hear from me and get some feedback in person. Seeing everyone was SO good especially when it had been like 7 months since I had seen most of my college friends (madness!). Nic, Av and I went to see Into The Woods one night in Cork and Meryl Streep did such a fantastic job in that movie! Another night, we went out in Cork after predrinks at Dave's house for his birthday/going away party.

 I forgot how expensive it is to go out in Cork after being here in Missoula and also going out in Killorglin a good few times over the holidays. On the night's out in Killorglin, I was with my cousins, sister and her friends and literally so much fun and such an absolute laugh was had! It cannot be put into words how much I thoroughly enjoyed my Christmas break at home. But I'm on a serious liver detox for a while! It was so nice to get to see everyone again and those who made the effort to see me or do something over the break, it was greatly appreciated (even if it was only like 5 mins)!!

If this picture doesn't sum up how happy this dog was to see me, I don't know what does. Oh, he also REALLY like this new jumper I got him here in America haha.

Christmas Eve in the Foley Household - note the matching Olaf jumpers.

Foley family Christmas selfie of 2014.

Onesie night on New Years Eve with the Foley girls.

REUNION! Girls night out in Cork for cocktails (+meghan).

My last night out in Killorglin for Gavin's 21st birthday with these beauties. Making Christmas all the better. Love them <3

New York
Flew from Dublin to New York on the 19th of January. Got home from the airport, very hungry and very tired. The next morning, I was meeting Fiona in Flushing after all her travels over the Christmas. We came back home, relaxed for a small while, and then headed into Manhattan. Our first day we wandered all around Central Park discovering some new statues I had never seen before. Our second day, we ate lunch in the restaurant I used to work in - Phebe's, and then we went and did Top of the Rock (it's an observation deck on the top of the Rockefeller Center). And the views were just incredible! I could have happily just stood up there and admired Manhattan for days on end.

Reading with Hans Christian Anderson

Playing Hide 'n' Seek with the Three Bears.

The view of Manhattan from Top of the Rock.

Chillin out with Alice in Wonderland.

Missoula
Our flight to Missoula left on Jauary 22nd from JFK. We had connections in Boston and Minneapolis, neither of the planes had any tv's in them so I got to finish off one of my books I bought at home - Girl Online by Zoe Sugg, a British YouTuber. My Missoula Mom, Shannon, collected me at the airport and she brought me some homemade soup and also homemade oatmeal cookies - YUMMY!! The next morning I unpacked my bags and found my Cadbury's chocolate had melted I'm assuming due to the underfloor heating in my bedroom. I wasn't impressed but at least they'll still taste nice! So I popped them into the freezer for a while and they were (almost) as good as new! I was no longer back when , I was dying with the flu. So in order to be a good patient and rest up - I started watching Game of Thrones. By the Sunday night I had finished Season 1 - hooked is an understatement!


Surprised by the lack of snow we arrived back to here in Missoula. But it's been a pretty mild enough winter apparently. This weekend is just going to be a lot of rest and recuperation after my hectic Christmas at home and also my busy two days around Manhattan.

Sorry this went up so late, I literally had another post typed up and ready to post once I got to New York but I was having too much fun and kind of forgot about it for the longest time (not a bad complaint really?!).

Thank you again to everyone who reads this blog! I was incredibly surprised by the amount of people I haven't spoken to in a good while that told me over Christmas they read it. I like doing it and once this year is over (can it never be over?!) I'll have something to be able to look back on and read what I did during my time in Missoula, Montana.

Thanks for reading,

- Shannen.

Week 14 - Good Food, Black Friday Madness and a Snowstorm.

Monday November 24th

Today I got up early to do some last minute cramming for my Wildlife Phys exam which went well! Today we also got back our Vertebrate exam results for both the lecture and lab! I got 88% in the lecture and 86% in the lab exam! So close to getting an A (1.1), massive improvement so far for that class! We don't have our cat labs anymore but we had our individual group meetings on our bird projects, ours being Perch Compliance. Sadie, Nathan, Fiona and I all gathered in Bret's office with Kris and constructed some graphs for our papers and presentations that we have to give to the class. Pretty cool!
This evening wasn't anything all that exciting, I read through some more papers before I can start my habitat paper. Fiona and I watched All Dogs Go To Heaven and then we played the David Attenborough Galapagos Islands documentaries in the background while we did some work. I ended up giving up on the work and just watching the documentaries because I LOVE David Attenborough. Tonight, I watched Pitch Perfect which finished up about 1.30am, so worth it!


Tuesday November 25th

 Today is the last official day of classes. Any class I have from here on out is just a review class. This evening I spent reading some more scientific papers for my habitat paper I have yet to start to write. Basically had a lazy day today, I'm exhausted I just took the evening off. Myself, Fiona and Eoghan went to Walmart, Dollar Store and Albertsons to get ingredients for the food we would be making for Thanksgiving. Fiona and I also watched a documentary on Snow Leopards this evening as part of her habitat assignment.


Wednesday November 26th
Student Travel Day - Start of Thanksgiving Break.

Got up nice and early and FINALLY started writing my habitat issue paper! I basically got the whole thing done as well today which was pretty impressive. I had read all the papers I needed to in order to get it done and I knew what I wanted from each one. It's only six pages long including references so it's not a lot to complain about but I've done so much CA (continuous assessment) for that class it's just getting really old at this stage.. Kate and James came over roughly 7pm and we all started our preparations for what we were making for dinner. Fiona started chopping her veg and marinating them, I made queen cakes for my Missoula family, Kate made her mixture for the Yorkshire puddings and James made his caramel slices. I was supposed to make the stuffing this evening but I forgot ... We decided to watch a 'horror' movie called Beneath, about a bunch of miners who ran into a bit of bad luck and everyone ended up being killed. Not entirely scary if I'm honest :/

The only picture I took preparations evening - the vegetables for roasting :)

 


Thursday November 27th - (3 weeks until I'm going to be at home!)


Happy Thanksgiving!!

So Fiona and I both got up at 9am and we had the Turkey put on at 10am for a nice slow cook. It was wrapped up in plenty of bacon! I made my Mom's potato stuffing and also another type of stuffing. The kitchen got a thorough cleaning today and Elliot came over and did our hoovering for us - yay! We borrowed stools, plates, forks and knives from Dave and Elliot also. Eoghan made the mashed potatoes for us, he was going to the judges house for dinner so we kept his for him. Fiona and I had the dinner ready for 3pm but we had to try and keep everything warm because Kate was having a problem with the Yorkshire puddings - they wern't turning out as she had hoped!

Elliot doing our hoovering :)

Tessa the beautiful Turkey wrapped up in baconnnn <3

Dave's delicious fruit bowl!

 Dave prepared a fruit bowl for our starter which was lovely! I tried new fruit too which is a pretty big step for me hahaha. We got seated down to dinner at 4pm and holy crap was it nice! I had made the gravy as well and there wasn't anything at all that I could fault in the dinner. Everyone was so completely stuffed that we just couldn't move. Kate and Elliot did the washing up whilst Dave cleaned down the counter tops. We all let our food settle before digging into the delicious caramel slices that James had made! We put Netflix on and decided to watch Hey Arnold! the movie. I had never seen it and had loved the cartoon as a child so we all just sat/lay in silence and watched it while we digested our well deserved food babies.

Our incredible Thanksgiving dinner.

Thankful for this lot making my time here so much better :)

James' gorgeous caramel slices!

 At about 6.30 I dropped Kate and James back to campus and Dave and I went to visit my Missoula family. They were sitting down to dinner later then they had planned so we chilled out at the table with them having the chats and whatnot. We had dessert which was a gorgeous apple pie and the queencakes which I had made. Afterwards we played a game of Catchphrase - which is essentially like pictionary but you can talk and lead them with as many clues without saying the word. Pretty fun game!!


I got home and was chilling out with Fiona when I got this sudden notion that we should go and check out some Black Friday deals. I text Elliot, Kate and James and we first headed out to Walmart and bought a few bits and pieces out there - taking advantage of the deals! Dave said he was at the mall and a lot of the shops would be open all night so we got to the mall at roughly 1 am - did some shopping and eventually got home at about 2.30 am. There was some incredible deals going on and I bought a new aeropostale tracksuit for $12 yayay!

Just a couple of eejits messing about in Walmart.

Wearing camo and hunter orange to try and fit in ... It's not working :/

Friday November 28th


So I had planned to sleep in until 12 pm today but I'm so used to getting up early I just woke at 10 am (yes that is early). Slowly got out of bed, put my clothes for a wash and began tightening the loose ends on my habitat review paper. I worked on my blog because I kind of neglected it a bit this week too. I also started and finished my presentation to go alongside the paper. Preparing all the animations and how each slide was going to look and function wasn't fun I ended up getting a massive headache and retreated to my bedroom in darkness for a while in the hope it would disappear. It didn't and I ended up taking a tablet to try and help - it did eventually but not entirely.
Elliot called over tonight and we watched The Late Late Toy Show. The yearly tv programme that every household in Ireland tunes into a few weeks before Christmas.


Saturday November 29th


So I eventually woke up at 12pm today. Got the best sleep ever in the last few weeks! The weather was so absolutely gorgeous out that we decided to take a spontaneous trip to the National Bison Range (again). Once we got out of Missoula we had some very light snowfall, which soon turned out to be a lot heavier than we thought. We got to the bison range and the snow was falling a lot heavier again! We drove I'd say about 2 minutes into the drive and a car passed us by, I waved them down and asked if they saw any animals, all they saw was a herd of White Tailed Deer (we had already seen one at the entrance). So I made the decision to turn around and try and head for home. I have never ever driven in the snow before, we turned out of the bison range and eventually got back onto the main road home. I slowly turned out onto the road and my car started sliding side to side and wouldn't move - fantastic. Being honest, I was kind of shitting my pants cause I didn't just have myself in the car but Fiona, Kate and James too. They helped me keep my cool and we eventually started making our way very slowly home. I think I probably pissed off a few drivers, who were driving at the normal speed limit (anywhere from 50-70 m/hr) there was no way in hell I was going to be going that fast!

My baby with the National Bison Range signpost and lots of snow :D

So the snow is so bad, we couldn't see anything.

We eventually made it back to Missoula and there wasn't really any snow on the roads here! (compared to what we had just been through). We decided we would go out to Applebee's tonight for dinner and it was amazing. I got the Triple Bacon Burger and then for dessert I got a brownie and vanilla ice cream :). It was really nice! By the time we had finished up, it had snowed pretty heavily here in Missoula. We slowly made our way back home with my car sliding every now and again on a slippery patch of road. But nevertheless, I got everyone home safe and sound and I have decided I already hate driving in the snow -_-

My triple bacon burger and chips :D

Sunday November 30th

Okay, so this is the last day of November, really?!

Got up early today, I wanted to do some practice on my presentation. I should really start my other paper but in my logic, I was able to bash out a whole paper in a day, I can do the same next week for my other one! I FaceTimed Mom and Aisling for a while and then I finally got to have a catch up with Av, although neither of us had any news for each other hahaha. Got practicing my presentation again, we have to aim to speak for 12 minutes and leave time afterwards for questions and also for the next person to prepare their presentation also.
Fiona and I had some food to get, and I also had to get more de-icer and a hairbrush so we started defrosting the car. This took the bones of twenty minutes, scraping off all the snow, cleaning the wipers, the windows, defrosting the door handles, clearing my lights free of frozen snow, taking lumps of snow off the mudguards of the car too. Gah I'm never going to get used to this winter crap. We eventually got to Walmart, a lot of the road had not really been salted or anything so it was a case of slow and steady wins the race or my car will slide and have a domino affect on other cars, hahaha. We got all our bits and pieces and got home. I unpacked and started cooking dinner, I'm not buying any more food, trying to use up what's left here in the house seeing as I've only got two weeks left in the apartment before I leave for New York :D :D Nothing interesting happened today, kept practicing over my presentation and I wrote out a few index cards - which I have to perfect tomorrow. Productive day I think ?!




So guys, thanks for reading this weeks post! We're really starting to get a taste of Montana winter at the moment (although it's really not that cold - yes -12C is not considered cold here). I have an extremely busy two weeks ahead of me so what I think I'm going to do is mush the next two weeks into one blog post and put that up in two weeks from today. These next two weeks are literally just going to be me studying and working on papers and presentations so 1) I'm not going to be doing anything fun at all just working away at stuff and 2) I want all the time in the world for studying, need to bring my grades up in order to try and get some 1.1's going!!
So I don't want to bore you with all the details of me studying and writing papers and presentations, but after the two weeks I'll do one bumper post which will be my last before the Christmas break! I head to New York first and then back home to Ireland for a full month!! (It'll be 6.5 months since I've been at home, can you tell I'm excited?!)

So thank you very much again for taking the time to read my blog, it's appreciated :)
See you back here again in two weeks! :)

- Shannen.

Week 13 - Grizzlies vs Bobcats!

Monday November 17th

Woke up early and went to college at 9.30am to get my football ticket for this weekends football game. It's University of Montana vs Montana State, the biggest football game of the year! The rivalry is something else! Reminds me of UCC and CIT except it's a little more extreme here :/ Got my ticket and then I chilled out studying in the UC before heading to my Physiological Ecology class where we're learning about stress, which is SO interesting. We're learning about all the hormones that are secreted in response to stress and why this is so. Love this class way too much I'm going to be disappointed when it's over. Creagh also told us that on Dec 1st, she'll have our class average computed and if we have an A, we don't have to talk the final exam. If we have a low B, she also said there isn't much point, but if we're sitting between two grades she would recommend taking it as it always boosts peoples grades - which is pretty cool! We had our Vertebrate class which we moved onto feeding and digestion.
After this we had our lab which wasn't too bad, well when I say that, it didn't go as badly as the last one (I think). We'll have to wait and see!! This evening we got some of our Thanksgiving dinner food and watched Frozen to cheer ourselves up after our exam.


Tuesday November 18th

For our habitat class today our TA Charlie gave the lecture on habitat selection because the week before he successfully defended his masters. Today was Siobhan's birthday, so Fiona and I got her an oreo birthday cake and we all went over to her apartment and surprised her at her door singing happy birthday. We chilled out here for a while and then Fiona, Kate, James and I went to McDonalds and hung out here for about an hour just chatting and arsing around looking for something to do. It's nice to have an evening off with no work to do, even though I have tonnes I could be doing.

Siobhan's Oreo Birthday Cake!

Wednesday November 19th

In my Wildlife Phys class today, our TA Devin talked to us about his masters work which is studying the effects of backcountry aviation on White Tailed Deer. Incredibly cool research work and he's looking for Undergrads to help him with his work also, which is something I could possibly be interested in but I'm not entirely sure. Got home about 2.45ish and put my washing on, took an hour of just sitting down on the couch doing nothing which was lovely. This evening went back to reading scientific journals for my paper I have due the 2nd of December, so much research to do for it it's crazy. Rechecked my Grant Proposal Application that's due for tomorrow and I printed that out to hand in as well as gathering up all the drafts and peer reviews to hand them all in tomorrow. Nothing too exciting :)


Thursday November 20th

 So I went in for my only class of the day at 12pm, with all my grant stuff to hand in. Which we did in the first 10minutes of class after some chats about our papers and presentations. We were informed we were supposed to have a guest speaker today but he didn't show up, so we chatted for a small while and then they let us go home. I did some more research into my paper this afternoon. I also went and took a small nap because I wouldn't be getting home until 2am roughly tonight. We left at 9.30pm for Mockingjay Part 1 which was on at 11pm. We got there at roughly 10pm, got our popcorn and drinks and we joined the line which had about 40 people in front of us already and the movie wasn't starting for another hour! So the movie was absolutely incredible! I was on edge the whole night long (I haven't read the books so I NEED to get them.)

Myself, Fiona, Kate and James all excited for Mockingjay Part 1!!

Coke and Popcorn at The Big D (that's the name of the part of the cinema we were in, I shit you not).

Friday November 21st

Only had one class today, didn't have our usual 4 1/2 hour lab cause it's our individual groups working on our data for our birds now. Instead, Fiona, Siobhan, Desiree and I went shopping this evening. We first went to Southgate Mall, I only got two pairs of leggings in JCPennys here, nothing major. We then went out to North Reserve and first went to TJmaxx and a shop called Ross. Ross is a shop where you can get brand names at discounted prices. I didn't need to buy any clothes but I did get a good gearbag which will be handy for travelling and overnight stays for field trips and such besides trying to squeeze everything into my schoolbag (which has probably seen better days). The movie If I Stay was being played in the UC on campus tonight so we got our tickets ($3) and our $1 Fanta. Brilliant movie, it's such a brilliant movie! Loads of people were crying, I was pretty close to it but I fought it back - didn't want to come out of the place with red puffy eyes.




Saturday November 22nd

So today is Cat/Griz day! Or Griz/Cat day. I don't know if there's a right or wrong way. I did a bit of study this afternoon for my exam Monday. We went into the game for half time, only because the football games go on forever and I needed to get some study in and Fiona had an assignment to do. We got to the game and Grizzlies were winning. The Montana State Bobcats didn't score until the last few minutes of the 4th quarter. The final score was 34-7 to the Griz. They eventually let the students onto the pitch after the game. We got pictures with two of the players and when they were taking a group picture, I asked could I hop into the middle of them for a picture and they said yeah, so I got in and hopped back out in a few seconds and got a pretty cool picture with them! We stayed on the pitch for a while before hopping on the bus home. I had some dinner and then got into my study again straight away, going by the complex terms we were given, I can't remember a lot of the stuff so I have a lot of work to be doing.

I got to try on this guys helmet :P From left to right: Desiree, Me, No. 69 for Griz, Fiona and Kate.

So when they were taking a group photo, I asked could I hop in and they said yes, hehehehe.

My International Family and I at the game :)

Sunday November 23rd

 Got up at 9.30 this morning, I was meeting Taylor and Sofia for a group study session in the library this morning. I got there at roughly 11am, Sofia was sick so she didn't join us. We ran through all the complex concepts and went through all the lecture slides getting a good amount of work done. Came back home and did some more study and cleaned my room (procrastination at its finest). Elliot, Eoghan and I headed out to Walmart to get some bits and pieces. Came back and yet again, tried to do some more study. I wasn't getting too much done, my mind isn't with it right now. After this exam tomorrow, I will have 1 1/2 weeks of no exams!! This hasn't happened in a long time. Tonight, we also had a pretty heavy snowfall which was incredible! It wasn't really sticking to the ground but it's apparently very weird that we haven't got any proper snow yet. But also, after Christmas time (January) we're supposed to get a lot more snow!!



So guys, an uneventful week really apart from the football game. Sorry I'm not doing anything incredibly interesting lately, there may be a day trip over Thanksgiving but we can't make any promises. We all have so much work to be doing we can't set anything in stone just yet.
Thanks again for reading!

- Shannen.

Week 12 - Jesus Christ Fintan, It's Cold Out.

Monday November 10th


So last night we had our first snow fall, so naturally this morning when I woke up it was FREEZING. I'm talking -16C freezing. I hate the cold..
Today I had my usual classes and we had a review lab for our Vertebrate Design and Evolution lab. Kris went through the different systems we wanted her to, and I recorded her going through them, I've found this helps me out a lot better with memorizing the different parts of the cat. We had thought about going bowling again tonight but Dave and Elliot said they had too much work to be doing so we didn't bother. Instead, I started and finished my annotated bibliography that's due for Thursday, while watching Men in Black, I believe it may have been the 3rd one? I don't even know, I'm not a fan of those movies.

First snowfall on campus.

Tuesday November 11th

So today is Veteran's Day, a Federal Holiday over here, so therefore, we have no classes. I FaceTimed Mom and Dad this morning and Dad said I should probably get de-icer and an ice scraper for the car. So Fiona and I did some study and then we left for Walmart. Only, we couldn't leave. The doors of my car has frozen shut!! We went in and out of the apartment with hot water trying to defrost the door handles and the doors themselves and then we gently opened all the doors and the boot. While out at Walmart, I got two large tubs of Vaseline so I could put this on the rubber of all the doors to hopefully make it easier the next time we have to hop into the car. While we were out, we went to Best Buy to buy ink for our printer and I also got Rocky and Patch some Christmas presents in Petsmart. I got Rocky a name tag for his collar with his name on the front, and on the back I have my name, address and home phone number. It's so incredibly cute I'm getting one for Patch as well. I also went to Target to get the de-icer and when I was there I was looking around the $1-3 section and found the cutest little Santa outfit ($3) for dogs, so naturally, I got it! It was way too cute to leave behind!
We got home and I spent my evening studying for my Vertebrate Design and Evolution class exam that we have tomorrow. These exams are never ending, over the next three weeks I have an exam each week, assignments to do and also two papers to work on. I can't even start one yet because we were not able to get all the results back last Friday.

Rocky's new nametag and collar :)

Wednesday November 12th


So I got up nice and early this morning to continue with my studying for the exam today. I skipped my Wildlife Physiological Ecology class to get an extra hour of study in. I can't risk messing this exam up because I didn't do too great on the last one. We had the exam at 1pm and I was out by 2pm. It didn't go all that badly, there was some questions I was a little bit iffy on but it didn't go terribly! And Bret also allowed us to skip one question we were not sure on, and we would get full credit for it - saving my ass a little bit!! Got home and FaceTimed Mom and Dad, and my sister for a while. Mom and Dad were asking how I was coping with the cold - I told them it's so damn cold here that the polar bears will be moving in soon! (-16 C) Supernaturals 200th episode was out yesterday and it was AMAZING. So amazing, I watched it again today! It was completely dedicated to the fans, it was brilliant. Spent the evening working on my blog a little bit, watching TV and reading some scientific journals for one of the papers I have to write. Always fun -_-


Thursday November 13th


So today we handed back our Grant Proposals and got back the corrected ones from members of our class. I didn't thankfully get any negative comments just have to change things around a little bit and maybe change my wording a little bit also. I fell asleep this evening for a while too, the last week and a half of constant work caught up on me a little bit and I just passed out on my bed until Fiona rang me. So Kate and James called over this evening and we watched the first Hunger Games, in preparation for Mockingjay part 1 next week :D SO exciteddddd!! This weekend we also plan to watch Catching Fire so we'll all be up to date on the happenings in time.




Friday November 14th


I just had my Physiology class today, which we got 1 point extra credit for turning up to it! That now brings my last exam up to an A so I'm quite happy with that. We have no cat lab this afternoon so I headed home and was meeting Fiona and Eoghan to go out to North Reserve Street cause we had a few bits and pieces to get. We went to Petsmart and got Patch his nametag and Fiona got one for her dog, Mya. We then went to Walmart and did food shopping and Fiona got herself a haircut. We got back, I worked on my blog and then made a start on an assignment that's due for next week as well as reading a few more scientific journals for my paper. All work and no play for the moment!

Patch's nametag :)

Saturday November 15th

So this morning we had an open lab for our Vertebrate Design class. A lab on a Saturday, who would have thought?! We were in from 11 until 2.30pm. studying our cats. Joe and Taylor also came in and soon enough Elliot and then Evan came in also. Fiona, Taylor and I put in some quality study into the circulatory system in the cat so hopefully we'll know it well enough for our exam Monday. I have a lot of work to go into that class to hopefully bring my grade up a little bit.
We got home and made lunch and put in some more study again a little bit. We're making Irish stew today for Elliot, Dave, Siobhan and Eoghan. I just happened to look up a recipe and saw that it takes over two hours to cook with half an hour roughly to prepare the vegetables and the potatoes. So we began our preparations. Eoghan wasn't able to make it this evening so he's coming over for his tomorrow. Preparing and cooking the dinner took longer than we expected but it turned out absolutely AMAZING. Everyone was stuffed afterwards, and Dave and Desiree had brought ice cream for dessert so we all helped ourselves and then once James and Kate arrived around 8pm ish we sat down to watch The Hunger Games, Catching Fire. Again, in preparation for next week :D Yay too excited!! Got to bed at like 1.30am and as soon as I hit the pillow I was asleep.

Stew preparations!

The finished product :D

Family meal :)

 Sunday November 16th

So today was spent studying for my exam tomorrow. I couldn't get in the right frame of mind for it and kept getting distracted  by absolutely anything. I started organizing my room / cleaning it out / de-cluttering. I found my sunglasses that have been missing since September, but how they ended up in the back of my wardrobe is beyond me! Makes no sense :/ I settled back down and did some more study, and then Eoghan called to have his stew we had kept for him from yesterday and we also gave him back his pot. Back to study again. Showered as another distraction and then again, back to study. I'm feeling a lot more prepared for this exam so I'm hoping it's going to go well!

A photo of the icicles that formed outside my bedroom window :)

So this week has been a lot of the same stuff. Except it's FAR colder. Having to de-ice my car whenever I need to go somewhere and wrap up extremely well, cause if you don't you'll literally freeze. And what's even worse - apparently it's not even cold according to the Montanans. Yay. So next week, is much of the same! Finals week is approaching fast and our workload isn't easing off any bit with papers and whatnot due in shortly so I'm afraid I don't have any extraordinarily exciting posts coming up.

Thanks for reading!

- Shannen.

Week 11 - Bambi, is that you?!

 WARNING: This weekend I volunteered at the Hunter Check Stations in Darby, MT, as part of one of my classes. The animals posted in the pictures have been killed, but there isn't any blood in the pictures. If you don't want to see these please don't read my posts for Saturday and Sunday.


Monday November 3rd


Today we had to discuss our assignments that we did over the weekend. I was in the first half of the alphabet so I had to do the assignment on the relative brain size on dinosaurs, while the others in the class got to do the assignment on the Irish Elk and it's antler size. We had our Vertebrate class where we discovered our next exam is this Wednesday week. It seems to be never ending with exams and assignments here. In our vertebrate lab we were looking at the respiration and digestive systems of our cats today. Kris also told us that we could cut up whatever organs we wanted to, which got me excited! We looked at the kidney, liver, spleen, stomach and small intestine! As well as finding everything else we needed to of course!

The insides of a Kidney, pretty damn cool yeah?!

This evening a group of us went bowling in Five Valley Bowling Centre, we had decided last week we were going to go. On Mondays they do $1 bowling and they charge $2 for shoe rentals. So we played 3 games of bowling and got it all for only $5! How class is that?! It was a great night! I won the first round, lost the second round by 2 or 3 points and in the 3rd round I taught Fiona how to bowl properly (she was complaining that I was too good - I'm not! :P ) And then she ended up beating me by 1 point! Teaching me to never teach anyone, anything ever again! :P

Five Valleys Bowling in Missoula

Tuesday November 4th


Today is election day so we have no class. Kris told us she'd leave the cat lab open for us to study our cats if we wanted to, so Fi and I got the bus in at 9.10 am and got to campus only to discover that all the doors to the building we wanted to get into were locked. Every single one! So we just decided to head home on the next bus back, a little bit pissed off but what can you do.
I got back home and FaceTimed my Mom, Dad and sister and my brother popped his face in for a few minutes too. After getting off the phone to them I FINALLY got to catch up with one of my best friends, Karen, from home. We were on the phone for ages before finally hanging up to both go and try do some assignments.
This afternoon, after both doing some work, Fi and I headed out to North Reserve street to book our tickets for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1. It's on in two weeks time and incase we don't have enough time to head out and grab them we said we'd get it out of the way now.
We got back and I went straight into trying to sort out my Grant Proposal Application assignment that has turned out to be the biggest pain in my ass ever. I literally have no idea how to go about doing this, and the internet in my damn bedroom doesn't work properly either. Leaving me going slightly insane! Jurassic Park was also on tonight so I watched the second half of that while doing some research on my Proposal where the internet actually works. I called over to Dave and Elliot's for half an hour to grab Elliot's hard drive so we could watch a documentary Fiona had on domestication of dogs. Interesting enough documentary but they didn't actually use wolves....they used huskys.. Nevertheless, it was a really interesting documentary :P


Wednesday November 5th


Today was basically spent trying to do my Project Proposal that's due for tomorrow at 12pm. Everytime I saved the document it changed the formatting of it and would move text around if not delete it. It wasn't fun. Spent hours researching it and finally got it done while watching the second Jurassic Park movie, yeah productive I know. Printed out my three copies and started preparing the stuff I need for my weekend in Darby. This weekend is our Hunter Check Stations class, the one class I took this semester that apparently doesn't translate back to anything at home.. Something I reeeeally didn't appreciate finding out until I got here and got registered for classes but hey, that's life I guess.


Thursday November 6th


We handed in our proposals. We had to print out 3 copies, one for Vicky or Charlie, and two for our classmates to correct. We each got handed two proposals belonging to other people which we have to go through and correct and also give them a marking scheme back with spelling/grammar mistakes and/or other mistakes they made in it. Kinda cool, I like reading through and correcting other people's work :P
I booked our Motel in Darby this afternoon and got all my washing done before making a start on yet again another writing assignment that's due in next week. This assignment is an annotated bibliography on 5 papers we will be using in our habitat conservation issue review paper. I am not looking forward to this whatsoever. I'm telling ya, once I go back to UCC next year, I'm going to be able to spit out a whole assignment in one night. Over here, you're given a whole review paper and only have a very little number of weeks to write it, no extensions, no excuses, nothing! And this isn't the only assignment you will have at this time as well, as an example I also have another review paper due the same week except we can't even start that yet because we haven't got our results back or even the general format of the paper. So we'll basically only have about two weeks to right up a full review paper as well as make a 15-20 minute presentation on the same subject as well. Not cool America, not cool.



Friday November 7th

Happy 21st Birthday Nicole <3

This morning I started packing for my weekend away in Darby at the Hunter Check Stations. I packed up my bags and headed to class at 11am, I posted a postcard home and returned a library book for Fiona too seeing as she had forgotten, and she had work. Had my Physiological Ecology class and we got our results back from last week, I got 88% which I'm really happy with! Except for the point that I was one point off getting an A, again!! I maaay appeal it but I haven't decided yet. This is the second exam in a row that I'm 1point off getting an A...

We went straight out to the Field Research Station to do the analysis on our Bird research paper with the Diamond Doves.  Fiona and I finished up our part really quickly, we had a system and we stuck to it. While the technology wasn't exactly co-operating with Sadie and Nathan, they only got three of their landings done while Fiona and I got all 15 of ours done!


We got home from our lab which seemed to just take forever, Fiona ran around packing while I went and grabbed us dinner. We shoved our food down and packed up the car and left for Darby! An hour and 20 mins of driving later, we arrived in Darby and checked into the Inn we will be staying at for the next two nights, The Mountain Spirit Inn. The owners of the Inn are so incredibly nice! We were chatting to them for a solid 20 minutes about the amount of Mountain Lions and Wolves that pass through the area and even just outside the Inn itself! The owner carries a small little self defense gun around in his pocket just incase.
We got settled and started working on assignments and blogging for the evening.

Incredibly comfy King Bed.

Our cute little kitchenette!

Our bathroom.

Saturday November 8th

Our day began at 8.45am, we had to be at the Check Station for 10am. We slowly got ready this morning and before we knew it, it was 9.45am and we had to leave. We loaded the car with our schoolbags, food and blankets.
We met Dylan, who later turned out to be our neighbor in Lewis and Clark, and also met Mark and Becky the two people we would be working with today. Essentially our biologists for the day. Becky and her family have been hunting in the area for years and are pros at aging deer and elk. On our first day we had a range of different animals come through, we had Elk, Mule Deer, White Tails, a Bison and even a Black Bear all come through our Check Station. There were two lanes to the station, the 'loser' lane and the successful lane. Anyone with game (that had successfully harvested an animal) came into the lane closest the trailer we were in, we aged Elk by their 'ivories' (their canines) and we aged White Tails and Mule Deer by cutting their cheek back and checking the sharpness of their teeth and whether certain teeth had two or three points to them. I didn't cut the cheek today I was recording the animals we got through and also manning the loser lane at the same time to keep the flow of traffic going.

Our shelter for Saturday and Sunday.

We wrapped up tonight about 7.30, Fiona and I were starving and decided to head to a place called The Blue Joint in Darby for dinner as recommended to us by Mark and Becky. I got a bacon cheeseburger (like father, like daughter) while Fiona got the swiss cheese and mushroom burger, a little more adventurous. We literally ate up every last bit and headed back to the motel we were staying in, both as full as butchers dogs! We browsed the internet for a small while and I was so shattered I was ready for bed at 10pm. Exhausted from our day! We chatted about god knows what and then fell asleep after 11pm sometime, the earliest I've been able to go to bed here in the longest time.

Our first animal of the day, a Bull Elk with a club antler.

Lovely Male White Tail packed up nicely into the boot of a Jeep.

Two lovely White Tails that were both harvested by children.

A huge Bull Elk that came through from Nevada.

Sunday November 9th


We got up at 8am this morning to pack up all our belongings from the motel room, make our food for the day and check out before heading to the check station. We left and arrived at the check station at bout 9.30am, early but they were already opened so we were off to work straight away. An incredibly slow morning.
We had a good few for the loser lane that had absolutely nothing. Becky's husband Jerry rang her and told her traffic was backed up by about 30 cars in the canyon because a fisherman was after being hit by a telephone pole and had died. We had a bad storm hit us today which knocked down a number of trees in the area which broke telephone poles and had live wires around. So naturally, we had no body come through the check station so we were preparing for a rush. We got wrapped up in coats, hats and scarves while the wind and rain battered us. I manned the loser lane noting down where everyone had hunted and how many hunters were in the car. I had the traffic moving at a nice fast pace in the loser lane, while the others aged the animals that came through and checked to see if all the tags were legit. We soon got quiet again. Becky's husband and daughter had come down to give us a hand and to speed things up a bit. Hunters tend to get a little cranky if they haven't got anything. Some could be out for two weeks and come extremely prepared and get nothing. Others though are very nice and welcome you with a smile and say 'hello there young lady, how are you doing today?', oh the simple pleasures.
 Seeing as today was incredibly slow and also incredibly nasty we were allowed leave the check station early. We filled out our sheets and left about 6.30 and we decided to stop in McDonalds in Hamilton on the way home. We grabbed our bite to eat and I drove home ever so slowly and carefully while again, the wind and rain battered the car and I was also on the look out for deer, that was something I did not want to hit with my Dad's car.
We got home and headed straight out to Walmart to get some meat before the cold comes and hits us. Very wet, very cold and very tired we got home. Elliot came over to see how our weekend went and once he left we went to bed.

A stunning Mule Deer that came through our Check Station.

I know a lot of you may not be okay with the fact these animals have been hunted and killed, as I did too before I got here. But here in Montana, there is great conservation efforts going into maintaining the numbers of these animals by issuing 'tags'. Hunters have to pay money for these tags, and this money goes to Conservation Efforts which helps to maintain a future for all of these animals. These tags also only allow hunters to hunt a certain species and age of an animal in a given area and are essentially a permit. This allows Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to maintain steady numbers of Wildlife in these areas. The Check Stations are put in place to monitor these and make sure the hunters are using their tags in the right areas and to also put a stop to poaching. Poaching is the illegal hunting of animals whether it be wolves, deer, elk or bears. I didn't include the picture of the Black Bear that came through because he was pretty bloody and I didn't want to freak anyone out but if you wouuuuld like to see him, you can ask me and I'll happily send you the picture :P



Thank you so much again guys for reading my blog! I really do appreciate all of you who take the couple minutes out of your day to read it. Just goes to show my efforts going into this aren't going unnoticed, cause it does take a lot of time and energy into it. I know some days are boring but I don't want to exclude anything so everyone can say up-to-date as it's hard to keep in contact with everyone! I only have 5-6 weeks of blogging left before I leave Montana and go home for the Christmas Holidays so I'll be taking a break from blogging for then until I come back here for my second semester!

'Til next week,

- Shannen.