School Has Started!

So I embark on my 3rd semester here at the University of the Philippines: Los Banos. After registration that I completed last Friday, I patiently waited for school to start on Monday. During my last moments of freedom, I mostly spent my time watching old movies that I had downloaded, but never finished watching and cartoons. It was a nice. ^_^

Monday was the start of class and things went pretty smoothly. I say that, because 2 of the 4 classes that I was supposed to have that day were canceled or the professors didn’t show up. On Monday I was supposed to have the following classes in the following order:

Unfortunately, I only had surgery lecture and the pharmacology lecture. Actually, they weren’t really lectures as much as an introduction to the course and overview of the syllabi. Although we didn’t end up having 2 classes that day, I have to admit that it was kind of nice not having to go through too much. It was like we were easing into the semester, and today it felt the same way.

Today I was supposed to have my Veterinary Pathology II (VPTH 122) lecture class this morning at 10am, but our professor never showed up, so all of the students were once again left in the classroom to just talk. Next up was supposed to be our Virology (VMCB 123) lecture class but alas, that was canceled as well. So we had a long lunch break from 11-1pm. My friends James, Faye, Belle and I went to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) cafeteria for lunch. I had mentioned this cafeteria in a blog about my parasitology collection project for my Parasitology I course a few weeks ago. We usually go there when we have time to kill and are able to enjoy some good food.

After that we decided to hit up the Rice Research Institute Museum, because we had never been inside before. It was an interesting site. There were many different instruments they used to harvest rice and also many types of rice the raised and cultivated. Rice is really a staple food of many Asian countries and is major part of the diet for 50% of the population of the world. It was a small museum with very old artifacts and tools from different countries, but it was very informative and it was nice to walk around. When we entered we pretty much had the entire museum to ourselves. It wasn’t big, but big enough to kill about half-an-hour in. It’s too bad I didn’t have my camera. I could’ve posted some pictures of what was in it here in the blog. As we were leaving a large group of people entered the museum to explore, so we ended our tour just in time.

Anyway, we headed back to campus to go to our Veterinary Microbiology II (VMCB 122) lab class. Our teacher was about 20 minutes late, but Dr. Rovira just went over the syllabus with us while Ate Dang, the lab tech handed out our lab manuals and also accepted payments for materials we’ll be needing in lab soon. Dr. Rovira is a nice lady and has an interesting way of speaking. She speaks in a very reserved and somewhat slow tone, so it takes awhile to get through topics, but she’s a nice person and I think I’m going to enjoy her lab.

We ended class within an hour and after that we had about another hour to kill before our next class, which was going to be Veterinary Pharmacology II (VPHM 142) laboratory. So me and the other 3 friends headed to the Student Union to play a few rounds of billiards before class started. James drove us there, we paid for a table and played almost 2 games. We didn’t have time to end the 2nd game mostly because Faye took a lot of time shooting (she was a novice at the game and didn’t play much beforehand), but it was still fun nonetheless. I enjoyed playing with all of them, but the weather was hot and sticky. Since the billiard tables were located in the basement of the building, it was kind of stuffy in there. James and I couldn’t make accurate shots mostly because our hands were so sweaty and the cue stick didn’t come off very well during our release. But that’s okay. We still had fun!

After that we headed to our lab class where Dr. Ariel Bombio (our past Anatomy associate professor) was heading the section. We went over the syllabus, got grouped into pairs that we’d be working with for the rest of the semester and within an hour-and-a-half we were done. My partner is my acquaintance Andrea. I believe she’s a 3rd year veterinary student, but is taking some 2nd year courses due to extenuating circumstances. (Don’t quote me on that… she’s not in our batch so I don’t talk to her much… haha) Anyway, the lab will be interesting, mostly because we’ll be doing practical exercises relating to veterinary pharmacology. Things related to anesthesia, routes of administration, etc. It’s going to be different than last semester since back then all we did was really write prescriptions, memorize important drugs and do dose calculations. Now we’ll actually be able to work with real animals, so that’ll be a blast for sure.

After that I went home, typed up my notes and then had some dinner. And now here I am typing out this entry. So far, the semester has been slowly starting for me, which I kind of like. But I hope that soon we’ll be getting started on the real work… especially for surgery class. I’m REALLY excited for that course.

Anyway, I’m going to go. Hope all of you are doing well! Leave a comment if you have time. Thanks all!