The Trip To The Equine Farm

This is actually long over due since I took this trip about 2 weeks ago, and I’ve been meaning to blog about this for awhile but just haven’t gotten around to it. Since I have a little free time on my hands, I thought I’d post about it.

My friend Miguel is a classmate of mine at CVM and so he invited all of our rotation to come out and hang out with him at his home in Batangas. We all agreed to spend some time there since at the time we were recovering from a very long bout of exams and presentations and because it was a three day weekend.

We headed to Batangas, which is about an hour-and-a-half away from Los Banos and then saw this expansive farm. We always knew that Miguel lived on an equine farm, but this farm was secluded from the rest of the homes in the area and had a lot of land. Frankly, I was really surprised, but when we got there we got to experience a little of what they do on the farm.

Miguel’s family is really warm and welcoming. It was a great to have a break at his place since it was ultra cozy and the food was good! Miguel’s mom is a really good cook I have to say.

Just take a look at that spread! Yum!

I also played a little piano for the folks. Apparently Miguel’s mom likes piano players… haha.

Miguel allowed us do take a tour of the farm and we got to see some really cool Thoroughbred horses. These are really different from the horses that we worked on TABON back at Los Banos as these horses were huge! Also, they were clean and well-taken care of. Miguel’s farm usually raises horses and then sells them to places where they’ll get trained for horseracing.

We did some interesting things, like doing rectal palpation and ultrasound on pregnant and non-pregnant horses. I have to say, that it’s a skill that I have to develop since I don’t do it too often, but it was still cool to do it on these nice looking horses nonetheless.

We eventually even got to ride the horses. It was only a teaser horse so it was quite small. While the girls are small and me and the other guys felt bad riding it. It seemed really tired… :(

Miguel’s mom kept feeding us so eventually we retired to the house once again. There was a karaoke machine that we all gathered around. We kept singing and singing for goodness knows how long. Some decided to play basketball and golf while at the farm while others enjoyed the food, singing and company.

We were supposed to leave around 2pm but ended up staying until around 7pm! We definitely had a lot of fun and again I have to thank Miguel and his family for his hospitality.

Let’s hope we can do it again sometime!

God, I’m Dying Already…

… okay, so not literally dying, but I think you get what I’m saying.  It’s getting pretty ridiculous.  I’ve come over the hump today with the amount of exams per day, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a bumpy ride.

So I had three exams today.  Pretty much back to back.  So three exams, yeah?  Surgery first, Equine Production second and Parasitology Lab Final last.

So I spent a lot of last night trying to cope with all the material I had to do for today. But I was up till 3am that morning working on 2 presentations with my group mates that were to be presented on Tuesday.  The presentations I did on Tuesday went well, but I didn’t get out of class until 6pm.  By the time I got home, had dinner and was ready to start studying it was 7pm.  I was already starting to crash at that point, and so I went over my Surgery notes once, and then crashed at around 9:30pm.  I slept until 7:30am today.  I really needed to recover.  And so starts the mad dash to cover the other two exams that I hadn’t studied yet which occurred this morning. There was a ton of material and I ended up only covering all of my surgery class but didn’t have that much time to cover the Parasitology laboratory material.

So I ended up taking the Surgery and Equine Production exams today which didn’t turn out to be much of a problem.  Then when I came to the Parasitology lab exam that’s when things got hectic.  As soon as I entered the room I started to blank.  For some of the gross specimens I knew I had seen them before, but I had a hard time recalling their names, which family and/or genus they were under, etc.  We only had about a minute to think about each thing and I was already drained from lack of sleep and trying to cram all the other stuff in my head.  I knew I got some answers correct, but it was still ridiculous. I hope that it went well.  But it probably didn’t… :P

Anyway, I have about 71 pages of Microbiology to go over tonight, which of course I haven’t had time to really start on.  And yes, my test is tomorrow.  Which is great.  Really, it is. *sarcasm* :rotfl:

I’ve got two exams on Friday which are for Pathology lab and lecture. I’ve also got two exams this Saturday for Pharmacology lecture and laboratory. I’ve still gotta label my pictures with notes today.  Where will I find the time?

Alright, I gotta finish up dinner now and get started.  But yeah, wish me luck, ok?  Hehe… and thanks to my new readers who have sent me support. That means a lot to me that you guys are rooting for me.

See ya on the Flip side! :bye: