Week 2 - A fun filled week!

Monday September 1st

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!

The herd of Elk with the young male.

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.

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.

A male White Tailed Deer.

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.

Questioning life's mysteries as I look down on the valley.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mountain Lion skull.

The Fish skull we looked at.

The Alligator skull and I.

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.

The BEES students from UCC with a beautiful backdrop.

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.

Trail of the Cedars.

UCC students perched on a log at Trail of the Cedars.

A panorama of the creek we sat by for lunch.

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...

One of the views at Logans Pass.

 There is still some Glaciers in the park but not as many as there once was! One such Glacier is Sparry Glacier and it's moving at an incredible speed of 6 inches per day! This is incredibly fast for a Glacier. The water here is also crystal clear as it comes from Glaciers, with a turquoise/green/blue color to it, due to all the minerals in it. The picture below was just supposed to prove that my new hiking boots were waterproof but the water is actually so clear it's very hard to tell I'm even standing in any. Apart from the few air bubbles. Absolutely incredible! We finished our trip at McDonald Lodge which is absolutely stunning! Out the back there is a lake with a dock where our group sat for the last hour just taking in the absolutely breathtaking scenery, while dipping our feet in the crystal clear water. A school of fish also swam passed us - so I guess technically wildlife?!

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.

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.

Week 1 - First Week of Classes.

Monday August 25th

So today's the day. The first day of classes! So unbelievably excited and so nervous at the same time. I haven't had to go into lectures and not know anybody in a long time. My timetable is so nice, I don't have classes everyday until 12 pm. Today though, I woke up early so I could get a chance to FaceTime home for a while since I was too busy with the last few days to get the chance to do it and the time difference makes it so awkward. I needed to go to the library and print stuff off for some of my classes so I decided I would go in nice and early so that I didn't have to be rushing around looking for my classes. The University run shuttle buses for those living off campus called the U Dash. These buses pick anyone living in Lewis and Clark up right outside and carries us over to the college. They also run a separate late night U Dash bus from Thursday - Saturday, this bus finishes at 2 am. Basically making it a lot easier on students to go out in Missoula. One particularly brilliant invention if you ask me, saves a lot of time, and also when it gets colder here people wouldn't be as tempted to skip class due to the bad weather. This service is again free to all students and faculty members. 

 I got all my notes printed off in the library so I strolled around the campus for a bit before sitting down on a bench outdoors and eating my lunch. By this time, Fiona had already had two of her classes and she had gone home for her three hour break. I went to my first class, Wildlife Physiological Ecology - WILD 346 - which sounds amazing. I'm technically not signed up for this class properly yet as I was waitlisted and they've since made a second section which I am able to get into once I can get a registration override. Registration overrides are required when a student doesn't meet the prerequisites which are put in place by the University. These normally include having to have done certain modules during your earlier years in the University. 

This is what a registration override form looks like. Once it's signed by the lecturer it enables the student to register for the class straight away.

 
After this I went and found the classroom for our Vertebrate Design and Evolution class, which Fiona is also taking, and it turns out it only has 11 people in it. We met our lecturer, Bret, and the lab assistant, Kris, who are both so lovely and took the time to get to know everyone's names, where they were from and their majors. Apparently, Ireland is an exotic place -_- . We had our lecture and from here we were straight into our first lab where we played with the bones of cats and it was up to us to be able to figure out which bone was which and also what are the different parts of the bones by using a lab manual which we were kindly provided with for today. It is recommended that we buy the manual because we will be using it a lot during our labs but seeing as the class only runs up until Christmas and the book costs $170 both Fiona and I are not sure what we are going to do as of right now. Hopefully find one online somewhere for cheaper! We were able to finish up our lab early so we headed home to have dinner as we were both starving!

The Zoology lab where we have our Vertebrate Design and Evolution labs on Mondays and Fridays.

Our notes out in front of us to help identify the different bones on the different specimens.

I felt like going on a walk this evening so Fiona said she would join me and take me on a nice path. Little did I know this was going to turn into a hike more than a walk! We walked along a trail way up a mountain which was really nice and so tough! The worst part for me was the breathing, because we are so high up here in Missoula, 978 m above sea level, and Carrauntoohill is 1041 m above sea level, which is crazy! We took frequent stops along the way to catch our breath while seeing some white tailed deer. But once we reached the top, the view was amazing! We saw a hawk fly over our heads which we could soon here in the distance as it got closer to the forest hunting for food. We heard a coyote howling in the distance which was freakingggg cool! We waited at the top for it to get dark where we started to watch the stars above our heads (how very romantic, I know!). It was so dark we had to use the flashlights on our phones to guide us down the dirt path home, I was so paranoid that something was going to jump out of nowhere and frighten / attack me. Hahaha. All in all - a fab evening!

The view from Mt. Sentinel.

Tuesday August 26th

Seeing as I have probably one of the nicest timetables in the world, I didn't have an early rise this morning again, thank God. I went into college for 11 am so I could print off some lecture material in the library for tomorrows lectures. Today we had our first Wildlife Habitat Conservation and Management lecture. Again our lecturer is lovely! She also took the time to get to know everyone's names by making each of us deliver a 3 minute elevator speech. This is a speech basically for us to boast any experience we may have in the Wildlife industry and to try and convince her to 'hire' us. In the Wildlife Biology course here in the University of Montana having at least two years of valid work experience is vital or you're not able to get your degree. Everyone spoke a little bit about themselves, saying what they're future goal careers were and what kind of experience they've had in the past. Yet again, when everyone heard there was two International Students in the class they all got very excited. Especially being from such an 'exotic' place as Ireland! This lecture gave us the basis for what the module would contain. Our final exam in December is only worth 13%!! We're used to all our final exams being worth between 60-80% so this is very different for both Fiona and I. There is a lot of continuous assessment involved in the modules here which I think is a great idea as it keeps you working all through the year and not just for a mid term test after a couple weeks and then possibly a few lab reports. This way I hopefully won't get bored with a continuous workload right up until Christmas. The weather here is particularly gorgeous again today. A bit colder in the morning but my God did it get hotter as the day went on!

Today I also had a bit of a disaster with my six year old laptop. I think it is officially on it's last legs. I was able to turn it on and off but I wasn't able to do anything else with it - not good. After turning it on and off a few times, as well as restarting it, and turning it off and taking the battery out, and turning it off and just leaving it off for a while, I decided to give up on it. However, I used to see an option to turn it on in safe mode with networking so I said I would give this a try. I had some important documents on it that I hadn't got around to transferring onto my external hard drive. And thank the Lord it worked! It has a very weird set up but at least I'm able to use my laptop to get my college assignments. Yes, assignments and it's only the second day of college! Fiona's camera also got delivered today so of course she was going around taking pictures of random things (me) testing it out. 

Wednesday August 27th

Today's Fiona's 21st birthday! 
I left about 10.15 am to go into college because I was bringing my laptop into the tech center to see if someone in there would be able to help me out with my crisis. I met Aoife, Kate and James along my way so of course stopped and had a chat with how the first week of classes were going for everybody. Turns out a lot of us have got a flu of some sort - Freshers Flu - which it's known as. Always in the first two weeks of college everybody goes crazy leading the majority of people very run down and therefore contracting Freshers flu. We basically had our own freshers week during Orientation Week which was crazy fun! But I am glad to hear that I'm not the only one that's sick! Haha. I then headed over to the tech support in the University Center. Two very nice, but very new, girls were behind the counter and they did everything they could to try and help me out before I had to leave for classes. My first class of the day - Wildlife Physiological Ecology - where I got my registration override form signed so I'm officially registered for my class! :D Then went to Vertebrate Design and Evolution class afterwards where we started to learn a bit about Phylogeny - LOVE this class.

When I finished classes at 2.30 pm I went back over to collect my laptop, and to see if there was any progress made. There was a different guy behind the counter this time and he also had a look at what was going on. His first conclusion was a virus - keep in mind I got new anti virus software not too long ago. He basically said it doesn't matter and that if the virus is good enough it's going to make it's way into your laptop and basically destroy it. Also, seeing as it's so old and running on Windows Vista - he said I would be better off with an upgrade to a new computer with Windows 8. It was only a matter of time before I would have to upgrade but I really, really didn't want to get rid of my old laptop. It was essentially my baby. 

This evening, Fiona, Elliot, Dave, Siobhan, George and I all went out to dinner to celebrate Fiona's birthday in the Iron Horse Brew Pub. The food in this place is amazing! I got the chicken fajitas which were amazing and Fiona ordered her first legal drink which was of course - cider. There's a brand of cider over here called Angry Orchard Crisp Cider and it really is (almost) nicer than Bulmers! We hung out here for a while and had a laugh and chats on how the first week of classes were going for everybody. It's so nice that everyone is clearly very happy here!

The Chicken fajitas from the Iron Horse Brew Pub.

Thursday August 28th

No classes today until 12pm as usual. Left my apartment at 9 am to catch the bus outside Lewis and Clark to head out to North Reserve Street where I could find some decorations for the party we were throwing for Fiona tonight. I went into the party shop and bought some decorations, there wasn't a very huge selection which I was quite disappointed with, but nevertheless, I got stuff. I then walked over the Best Buy to price some laptops. I literally only had an hour in this place before I had to rush back for my class so I couldn't spend too much time laptop hunting. I had done some research online and found a laptop that I liked the look of - it had everything in it and it was a good price too. There was good reviews on it so I went and had a look. One of the guys in Best Buy said it was a good laptop so he talked me through the features which I was pretty happy with. I then headed off for the bus back to campus. 

Met up with Fiona and had lunch before heading off to our Wildlife Habitat Conservation and Management class. Here our lecturer gave us a run down of what the syllabus includes and the various field trips we would be partaking in. 

Fiona went to work in the Food Zoo while I headed off home and started the party prep. Sarah drove me out to a liquor store (off license) where I got the vodka for the Jelly Shots I was going making. We also bought the mandatory red cups for the party too. Everyone was due to arrive by about 9 pm so we were hoping and praying the Jelly Shots would be set in time. Sarah blew up all 20 balloons while I hung up a Happy Birthday banner, put up some streamers and hung up some of the balloons around the place. While I was making my dinner, I was also making Jelly Shots for the party - multitasking at it's finest! Jak from downstairs gave us the use of his speakers for the night so I helped him bring them up the stairs and he set them up for me. Eventually, I got the Jelly Shots made and Fiona got home so I was able to shower and have my dinner while she took over some of the preparations for me. Siobhan, Dave and Elliot went cake hunting for me today and the cake they picked up was called - 50 shades of chocolate - PERFECT! 

Happy Birthday banner and streamers

Some of the 20 balloons.

50 Shades of Chocolate Cake.

Everyone started arriving, and we played some drinking games (of course), sang songs, danced to music and had an all round good time! To be honest I could not even tell you what time the party finished up at but it was a brilliant night! Fiona enjoyed herself which was of course the main thing. 

What a mad bunch of people from all over the world.

Friday August 29th

Woke up pretty early this morning and I started the clean up - if anyone knows me, they know I don't like mess in the kitchen! I filled up three bin bags full of bottles, cans, cups and rubbish. With the help of Sarah, we began scrubbing the counter tops which were covered in Jelly Shots, scrubbed the floor, also covered in Jelly Shots, the walls which ALSO had both jelly shots and champagne on them and alcohol of all sorts. With the two of us it didn't take us too long to get the place cleaned up before I left for my class which was at 12 pm.

 

The three full rubbish bags!

I arrived to class early so I sat in the lecture hall and I got to have a lovely chat with my lecturer Dr. Creagh Breuner, all about me being on an exchange and my thoughts of the place so far. There was a welcome feast going on right outside the window of where our class was being held so before people began coming in I sat and watched what was happening, cheerleaders dancing (just like in the movies!), the national anthem was played followed by a minute silence for a student who very sadly died in a car accident while on his way to Missoula to return to college. I watched the team mascot - Monte Bear - dance around on the grass for a while. Class began and Dr. Breuner could not compete with the noise levels that were going on outside and everybody wasn't really able to pay too much attention with the music outside so she called an end to class (2mins in) and let us all go for some free food. Yes. FREE food! Everyone on campus could line up as many times as they wished and get free hots dogs, taytos, apples, cookies of all sorts and free drinks too! I've said it before, but this place is awesome! I met up with George and Elliot and we got some food before heading off for classes at 1 pm. 

Free unlimited hotdogs! You could literally queue three times or more!

Some of the crowd at the welcome feast on the oval.

My lab at 1 pm included looking at skeletal structures of various animals and comparing the bones and naming the different parts of the bones as well. These labs are very relaxed. It's perfect. It's up to you to do the learning and to ask questions if you're stuck, you use the lab manuals and also the internet to help answer all your questions. I find when you have to do the work this way yourself it makes it a lot easier to learn. 

Alligator skeleton.

Fish skeleton.

Gliding lemur.

This was the day my car was being delivered from New York! I was way too excited - I was literally like a child on Christmas morning! We met the truck driver out at Missoula International Airport as he needed a big space to be able to unload the car off the truck. I signed for the car and both Fiona and I headed off to Walmart to stock up on some food for tomorrow's road trip! :D

The truck my car was delivered on :D

Saturday August 30th

First Road Trip.

I got up quite early to make some lunch and dinner for myself for the day but to also take the Envoy for a wash because it was absolutely covered in dust! There was no way I was going to drive it looking like that! Luckily I didn't have to go too far to find a car wash. Afterwards, I collected Fiona and George and while they went to Walmart, I went to Best Buy to buy my new laptop. It's an Asus X551C and it's perfect. I'm in love with it. We came back home and gathered up our belongings as well as Elliot. And head off.

This was the first long distance journey I have gone on while in America and also my first and only time on a highway which wasn't at all as bad as I had imagined! The speed limits here are crazy, in most parts the speed limit is 70mph. Our destination today was Flathead Lake. Flathead is the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. With a surface area of between 496 and 510 sq km, making it slightly larger than Lake Tahoe. The lake is a remnant of the massive glacial dammed lake, Lake Missoula, of the era of the last interglacial. There is no words to describe how absolutely stunning this place is. We stopped in Finley State Park first and had a look around here.The water is crystal clear and even at this time of the year it's not all that cold! As demonstrated by George, Elliot and Fiona who went swimming in it. I did go in a little bit but my main thing was not wanting to stand on the rocks barefoot with all these disgustingly massive spiders that kind of hop along the rocks - gross. 

Panorama of Flathead Lake.

 From here we headed up to another one of the State Parks on the shore of the lake called Wayfarers Park. This park was on the North Eastern side of the lake and again, the views were magnificent. We did some exploring about the place before sitting down for some dinner at a picnic table and then we headed for home. One of the other girls out from Ireland was having her birthday party tonight with a Thrift Shop theme but I was way too exhausted and still dying with the flu to even find the energy to go. I think I drove close enough to 200 miles overall today. Crazy.

Another one of my classic looking out into the horizon kind of photos.

Sunday August 31st

Happy 21st Birthday Kisha!

Today had to be one of the laziest days I've had so far. I slept until 1 pm and got out of bed about 1.30 pm. Dave and Elliot called over for a while. We all have homework to do - yes we get homework in college. All this homework counts towards our grades too so it's important to spend time on them getting them right. As well as doing homework, I just worked on my blog a little bit and tried to sort out my schedule with dates that assignments are due and what field trips we have coming up etc., etc.








I am way too excited about all the classes I have picked for this semester! However, something I have noticed is how far behind everyone else in our classes we are. A lot of them are seniors, masters or post graduate students. A lot of them are also on their second degrees. They all have more of an educational background and also a lot more work experience than we do. It's a little daunting, but who doesn't like a challenge?!

 
Next week will be about my second week of classes, my first assignment, my first class quiz and wait for it - TWO road trips!
 

Thanks for reading!
 
- Shannen