I think this update is a bit overdue :), but I'm afraid it is going to be short. As usual, life seems to get more frantic as my time here passes. I don't even want to think about what next year is going to be like.

Last term ended with an exam covering all the food/farm animal lectures. We had a public health practical with specimens from local slaughter houses and then a 5 hr written exam with essays and multiple choice/true false questions (with negative marking!). It was definitely our most difficult exam so far in the course and I was very happy when my name wasn't on the list for pass/fail orals. The frustrating thing was how much studying I did for this exam! I spent way more time studying for this exam than any others I have had in the past and still didn't manage to get a mark I would have liked. Oh well, I won't complain since I passed.

After that exam, we had 5 weeks off for spring break and I manged to get in two good weeks of studying for our June exams on companion animal medicine. I also managed to take a day trip down to Culzean Castle (http://www.culzeanexperience.org/), south of Glasgow, with my flatmate on one gloriously sunny day. Its a bit more like a fairytale castle than a functional fortress and is set on cliffs overlooking the sea. Absolutely stunning.

Once again this year I spent several weeks, during spring break, lambing near Lancaster. I still enjoy it despite the desperately hard physical work. We also had several lambs born with interesting physical abnormalities which I'm sure my Pathology professor will enjoy.

Last week my flatmate and I decided, spur of the moment, to go to the Orkney Islands, north of Scotland, for the last weekend of break. Unfortunately they had windy, rainy weather while the rest of Scotland was bathed in sunshine, but I'm still really glad we went. There are tons of prehistoric villages, stone circles, burial cairns to crawl into, etc all over the island. The most famous is Maes Howe (http://www.maeshowe.co.uk/), a burial cairn build 5000 years ago, which even has Viking graffiti carved inside. You enter by crawling through a tunnel about 15 feet long into the main chamber which is surprisingly large and tall enough I couldn't touch the ceiling.

I'm now back in Glasgow for couple of days (this is the first week of term) before driving down to Birmingham this weekend a veterinary conference. The two weekends after that, I have prospective students staying in my spare room and then we only have three weeks of classes left for the year. Today we had several lectures on veterinary ethics and tomorrow we start the
section on infectious diseases in companion animals. Still to come this term are companion animal endocrinology, cardiology, behaviour, dentistry, emergency medicine, opthamology, and wound management. We also have several interactive Problem Based Learning session each week using case studies to reinforce the lecture and practical material.

With all that is going on, I'm afraid you probably won't hear from me again till after my exams in June, but I will try my best to get photos up on my website from my last few trips.