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Published: February 24th 2008
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My Room
View from the door. To the right is my desk and dresser. I can't believe that 2 weeks have passed since I posted an entry! Time flies by so fast here. Even though I am rather tired from this weekend's excursion, I swore that I would not go to sleep until I wrote again. I hope everyone appreciates the sacrifice. 😊 I'm going to cover the sharehouse and work, and hopefully either tonight or tomorrow I will do another post for our weekend trip. To have it all here would be impossible, both for me to write and you to read...haha.
I live in the Cairns Sharehouse. People living here are usually working in Cairns or staying here for a short period of time (the average seems to be about 6 months or so), since I personally cannot even begin to imagine staying in a hostel for longer than a couple of nights. The people are also usually young, around 22-28 years old. I'll give you a brief tour of the apartment. When you walk in, there are 3 bedrooms on each side of the hallway. I think the setup of the rooms are slightly different from each other, but mainly include a bed, desk, TV/DVD player, closet, and balcony with
Balcony
View from over the privacy wall surrounding my balcony. a table and 2 patio chairs. Directly ahead is the kitchen table. To the right of the table is the TV/living room, with 2 couches and a TV/DVD player. The kitchen is on the left. Each room has its own designated cabinets and shelf in the refrigerator. We are provided with cooking utensils and silverware. If you walk past the table, there is a sliding glass door outside to the patio area. Another apartment connects to the patio from the opposite side. Each bedroom has air-conditioning, but our attempt to cool the apartment by closing the windows and opening our bedroom doors with the air on full blast was a failure.
One thing I'd have to say for Cairns, you really can't get any more multicultural than this. People from all over the world seem to flock to Australia, and most come to Cairns at one point or another for its party reputation. In my apartment there is a guy from New Zealand (Damien), his German girlfriend (Kate), 2 Korean guys (Jai and Julian), and the 3 of us from the United States (repping New Jersey, New York, and Tennessee). Across the patio in the other apartment we
Random picture
I took this picture when walking home from work. hang out with a couple who are from Peru and Germany, a med student from Sydney, another Australian man, and more people who aren't as social. The floor below us is home to a couple from Ireland (I would marry the guy in a second...THE ACCENT!), and 2 guys from England (also enjoyable). Its really fun to be surrounded by people with so many accents! A lot of people come here to learn English strangely enough, including Jai, Julian, and the girl from Peru whose name I don't know how to spell.
Work is a whole different world, and I think I've finally gotten the hang of being there. Red Bank Vet has spoiled me...it is so shiny and clean and new. When I first got to my internship site, I was surprised to see that it more closely resembled Grimes' pictures from Nicaragua than RBVH. As I already told Rachel and Amy, there aren't specific times for treatments, just a general twice or three times a day deal. Each animal does not have an individual treatment sheet...all the treatments are written into a notebook at the beginning of the day and checked off when done. Animals rarely
Baby wallabies
Each tech has a joey of her own to raise. get catheters, the only one I've seen put in during these two weeks was for a dog bring treated for Tick Paralysis (not to be confused with Lyme disease!). And I have seen surgeries for spays, neuters, an oral fibrosarcoma removal (which was a bloody mess), a "conjunctival bridging after the removal of a seqestrum" (I had to write this phrase down at work to make sure it was right...a scab-ish thing was removed from a Himalayan cat's eye), hemangiosarcoma removals from multiple sites on a dog, etc. etc. Even blood work isn't done often, since they don't have an in-house lab.
I get to work with a lot of wildlife, which is definitely a new experience. There are specific ways to handle birds and reptiles, and the diet is much more complicated. It took me about a week to get used to handling wild birds...they feel so breakable! I started out as rather ambivalent towards birds, and the bigger the beak the more likely I was not getting anywhere near it (I'm looking at you Hans!) Unexpectedly I have gotten rather fond of the feathery ones. My favorite so far was the Frog-Mouthed Tawny Owl. It had
Excuse Me!
I'm trying to sleep in here, and flashes keep going off! a broken wing and was hand-raised since it was very young, or it wouldn't have been as easy to handle. I had to roll raw beef heart chunks in a powder of Insectivore (high in protein) then wrap them in cotton to imitate a mouse. Each piece was put down the owl's throat using tongs. After a day or so I was a pro! The same general idea was used for a juvenile dove that came in, except it needed mango rolled in Insectivore and millet seeds. That was a little scarier since I was sure it was going to choke on the pieces, so I cut them extra small haha. Three Eclectus parrots have been at the clinic since I arrived, and they are right on the edge of my comfort zone with beak size. They have a reputation for being quite feisty, especially when trying to do their treatments. what they don't have in personality they make up for in looks! The males are a bright green with blue, and the females are purple and red. Its no wonder they have been getting treatment for so long, since these birds are worth thousands of dollars each. I've gotten
I'm freeeee
Larry getting some exercise rather fond of them too. I feel like they really appreciate it when I give them their fresh fruits and veggies, and 2 out of the 3 let me hand-feed them.
I have talked a lot about the patients, I suppose I should talk about the people as well! I don't know if I should mention names on the journal...I'll have to think on this one. Until then I will be rather vague. Although my favorites from RBVH can never be replaced in my heart, the people are really nice and laid-back at the clinic. The owner just came back from a trip to Guam with another doctor at the clinic. One doctor is a recent graduate from New Zealand, and the other brings us food that her mom made. The doctor who went with the owner has a main focus on Immunology and Pathology so I am going to stick by her. It works out well since the owner is interested in wildlife treatment and conservation, which is the areas Christina wants to focus on. The techs kinda let us do whatever we want. It was a little strange when they told us to go do treatments
the first day, but they don't mind us asking a million questions and I appreciate that. 😊 Along with the various bird treatments, I have learned how to force-feed a frog, bottle-fed a joey, and after i mentioned my interest in surgery, how to prepare for and monitor surgery. Speaking of bottle-feeding a joey, this was another funny difference from home. During the spring, people at RBVH are constantly raising baby birds, squirrels, and anything else that falls out of a tree. Here, all of the techs are raising baby joeys! They carry them around in pouches to imitate the mother, and they are cute, in a huge rodent kind of way.
This post isn't as humorous or witty as I would like it to be, but I am sleep deprived from this weekend, and am unable to think past straight facts. Really, it is just an excuse to post pictures that I took at work. Enjoy the pictures, if not the written part, and I will try to get the post about the trip up tomorrow.
Lindsay
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Rachel
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great read
loving the blogs, linds!! and i'm blushing that i got a bit of a "nod" in this blog. i feel a little famous now! ha ha! hopefully that doesn't mean i have to go to rehab anytime soon. eww. how's your toe? miss you!