Uni life

As you may have guessed by the amount of time in between posts, my life has been a little busy of late. First year of uni is over and done with and in a few weeks I will be facing midyear exams again. To say first year was a big learning curve is a bit of an understatement but I love a challenge so managed to make it through relatively unscathed. The change in demographics of my co-students took a little adjusting to but I have found several good friends in my year and am lucky in that we have nearly 20% mature students in our year so there are several parents and other students my age (or older).

We have started studying “real” subjects now in second year (as opposed to biology, chemistry, physics and statistics in first year) and I am enjoying them a lot more as it is a lot easier to see the relevance of anatomy and physiology than that of physics for example. Today we spent the day handling horses, lunging them, practising injections (not on a live horse), and a stack of other technical things. One poor horse spent several hours having sticky labels stuck all over it as we tried to learn all the ‘points’ of the horse and their names. It looked so funny but was really well behaved and just stood there quietly.

My horses are doing ok even though there is still no grass growing. The kids and I spent an afternoon in the paddock a few weeks ago and planted out a heap of barley seed so hopefully soon it will grow and the horses can eat something other than hay. I have been taking them out for an hour or so morning and night to clean up the grass growing around the yard but live in constant fear of more sand colic. It’s funny but the more I learn about the things that can go wrong with my animals the less well I sleep at night, go figure! The kids and I recently took the horse and pony down to a riding trail near Lyndoch and spent a few hours riding in the scrub. The boys walked for the first bit and had a ball checking out the scrub but they also had a turn on the pony on the way back and enjoyed that as well. My horse is going really well at last and I have taken him for several rides out of the paddock with no problems so the next step will be to take him out to Mt Crawford or similar and teach him how to canter. Could be interesting but I’m fairly confident he will be fine (fingers crossed)

Enrollment Day

It’s been a long and hot couple of weeks not helped by the fact that life has been particularly crazy of late. The kids and I went to Adelaide for Australia Day and had a lovely afternoon catching up with the relies at my Aunt and Uncle’s house at North Haven. They have a beautiful house and it is right on the beach so once the day gave way to evening we went for a long walk along the beach. We found a live crab and many sea shells to add to our collection.

Patrick and Christian explore a crab they found on the beach at North Haven on Australia Day.

On the Tuesday I left the kids with my Mum and headed into the city for enrollment day. Being a real country bumkin I didn’t have any change for a parking ticket and had to drive for ages to find a cafe with free parking where I could swap a note for coin. I still managed to get to enrollment on time though, which is a bit surprising for me, normally I’m late for everything! The classes are at a manageable time with no early starts and one day a week at Roseworthy.

First year subjects are Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Animal Science so hopefully there will be no problems. However, it has been many years since I studied Biology, I have never studied Physics and Chemistry was a bit of a struggle last year so we will see…! Animal Science should be a breeze! Ha, Ha, Ha!

Yesterday was Betheny’s birthday party at the swimming lake and it was perfect weather. She had many friends, her Dad & Dimi, Grandma, Poppa, Uncle Kevin and Troy and Vic came over as well. Everyone had a good time regardless of the fact that the icecream birthday cake was melted and I forgot bowls and spoons so the kids dug in with their fingers! We are very lucky to have such a great facility that is free for the public. The kids spend many hours during the school holidays dipping in the lake while the grown ups relax with a book under a tree.

Beth and Jess enjoy eating melted icecream cake with their fingers.

Beth and her friends attacking Beth's melted icecream cake. They made a huge mess but loved every minute of it.

Today my darling father drives to Adelaide to pick up the moving truck and tomorrow the fun really begins! I have just received a phone call from the kids Grandma and she is going to come and pick the kids up for the day so at least they won’t be hot, bored and under feet all day. It will be enough with the grown ups being hot, bored and overworked all day! Tuesday I pick up the key and then we unload, unpack and it’s all done (yeah right!).

Guess I won’t be back online for a while due to new house, internet connections etc so I hope everyone manages to keep cool while they wait out the heat wave and I look forward to getting back online soon.

An interesting week…

And what an interesting week it was. The kids and I spent last week in Kapunda with my mum and my grandma, who the kids call Granny T, visiting local attractions and checking out housing options. I’ve lost track of the number of houses and real estate agents I visited.

It is a real meat market when it comes to rental properties in the Gawler region and being a single parent with pets is certainly not helping matters. You have to fill out an application form, wait to be advised of a viewing time (usually a group viewing) and then if you think the place is suitable you tell the agent to lodge your application and then wait for a reply. Every house I have looked at so far has had around 6 or so different people apply to rent it so I guess it’s not surprising I haven’t found something yet.

Tomorrow will bring my second trip to Gawler this week for house inspections and hopefully this time I will be successful. I really hope so as time is running out with school going back in just 12 days! I applied for a house directly opposite the campus but they haven’t decided who they want to rent it to yet, so in the meantime I will check out a property at Cockatoo Valley and a couple at Kapunda if the agent can fit me in. Fingers crossed!

I got home from Gawler on Tuesday night and let the dogs out for a run. It was only a matter of minutes before they were fighting over a bone resulting in a trip to the vet for our Red/Blue Heeler Shrek. She was such a good dog and just sat there while the vet explored a gaping hole under her chin. She didn’t even flinch when all the hair was clipped off but was looking decidedly out of sorts after her ears and throat were bandaged. I think she realised how silly she looked!

The big news for this week though is that the University offers became available today and after 45 minutes of trying to log on to the SATAC website I discovered that I had been accepted to study Vet Science. I am so excited! It has been a dream of mine to be a vet since I was at school and now I am finally going to get the chance.

Last year I was accepted into Animal Science which can be used as a stepping stone into Vet Science but I deferred in the hope of passing Year 12 Chemistry and Maths and getting directly into Vet Science. After a most interesting year of work, study, travel and spending great quality time with the kids my dream has finally come true!

Hopefully next post will be about the big move into our new house. Wish me luck.

A boring day

Well, it’s been a rather boring day today so I thought I’d share the boredom with the rest of the world like so many other bloggers…!
No, not really! Although, I won’t promise that everything that I post will be of vital interest to anyone who may come across it, I will do my best.
I supposedly finished my job of 4 and a half years in early December but somehow I got roped into filling in this weekend and really enjoyed it despite the 7:30 a.m. start! It is a very different feeling when you go to work and know you aren’t responsible for fixing anything! (well, at least it is a novelty for me).
The rest of the day has just been wasted away with Series 4 of Dr Who and contemplation of masses of packing boxes! I really should get up and get some more packing done as I am meant to be moving in the next couple of weeks, but until I have a house to move to, the motivation seems to be missing. I have fired up the old scanner and scanned all sorts of identification documentation ready to send with rental applications tomorrow, so I guess I have achieved something of use today.
Next big thing on my personal horizon (after packing and finding a new house) will be the University offers due out this month. I successfully externally studied Yr 12 Maths and Chemistry in 2008 and am hoping I will get an offer for Vet Science at Adelaide Uni. That will be a big shock for someone who hasn’t done full time study since 1993 but I think I am really looking forward to it?!

I have spent the intervening years completing a Graphic Pre-press apprenticeship, having and raising 3 children, developing an intensive aquaculture business, separating from my husband and running a hotel-motel office for the past 4 and a half years.
Now for the next challenge!