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.