Went to San Fran last sunday to return Max the poodle to his rightful owners, then went shopping with my aunt, was going to find a nice professional suit, every professional woman must have one I think. Anyway couldn't find excactly what I wanted, funny how the stores never seem to have that excact thing I have in my head... I hate shopping for clothes... Ended up in the GAP for kids buyng clothes for my son, much easier! Clothes shopping is more tolerable with girlfriends, like last may in Copenhagen when my friends came over from Iceland to attend my "fabulous" Eurovision party and shop 'till we dropped!

On friday I was in Davis yet again, this time to attend the UC Davis vet school graduation. It was very nice seeing everyone again, kinda sad though, knowing I probably will never see most of those people again. The service itself was very nice, everyone marched in with those silly hats and capes, but it was a celebration, wish my vet school had something like that, the royal veterinary and agricultural university of Denmark just sends the certificates by mail! Talk about an anti-climax to 5 1/2 years of hard work!! Am definately going to have my own party with family and friends when I finally turn in my final paper this fall.

The last four weeks here have been great, cannot believe how fast time has flown. I have been doing spays and neuters on cats and dogs, so I feel much more confident doing surgery than I ever did after clinics at vet school. Have also learned a lot of other practical stuff, for example how to splint a broken leg on a bird with masking tape and a toothpick! Today I had a wolf as a patient, was tame, very nice animal, friendlier than some of the dog patients I have seen! Am going back to Copenhagen on sunday, will start packing tonight, as I am invited to visit a vet friend tomorrow and going out for shopping (this time I know what I'm getting, have done research on websited, no more spending hours looking for what I want!) and dinner at "the" italian restaurant in town.

I share my bed with a handsome, black, one-eyed male called George. George is one of my aunt´s three cats, seems to have taken a liking to me, or maybe I´m just sleeping in his bed... Another temporary member of this household is Max the poodle. He is a strange dog, does not respond to any commands, apparently his owners did not deem it neccessary to train him at all and carry him everywhere. Poor dog. Max will be going home to his real parents next weekend. He seems to like me more now, at first he would avoid me and jump off the couch when I sat down, now he seems not to mind too much. The other two cats, Cosmo and Lucky are very friendly too, but not attention seeking. While I´m writing this, all the cats are sleeping on my aunt´s bed, Cosmo and George are bundled up together in a big black ball, sometimes moving to groom one another, very cute.

Well, my first post in weeks. Survived 4 weeks of internal medicine at UC Davis vet school. Most days spent frantically running around trying to finish everything in time, 12-16 hours every day. Managed to get most weekends off though, amazingly. The whole stay was very educational, no regrets.

The weekend after I finished was memorial day weekend, and I went to San Fransisco. I stayed with Nick and Mias son and daughter in law, and had a very nice time. San Fran is such a wonderful city, I definately like it better than Sacramento, which is the only other major american city I have seen. I used the opportunity to finally meet my penpal of 13 years, Petar from Yugoslavia, who was in SF for the weekend meeting with some friends from Yugoslavia that live in New York. He turned out to be very nice and we were friends right away, was kinda nervous to meet him after the german disaster about 10 years ago that some of you may remember.

Last weekend I went back to Davis to attend the annual "smoker", a pretty wild party held by the senior veterinary students at UC Davis, for all students and faculty of the vet school. It was a lot of fun, definately worth spending the 3 1/2 hours on that Greyhound bus each way. Came back on Sunday and my aunt took me to a quilting show in Santa Rosa, very nice, Stina would have loved to see that...

Now I am staying with my aunt Herdis in Cloverdale, a small town about 2 hours drive north of San Fransisco. I am spending my weekdays at the local veterinary clinic, with two very nice vets. This is the real world of veterinary medicine, more rutine, but for me also more interesting than the specialized work at the vet school. Not every animal that walks in the door has a serious and rare disease...

My first week of medicine is going well so far. Monday I was cautious and only took one case. It was a kidney patient and I got to do cystocentesis! For those not fluent in the language of medicine, this involves poking a needle in the dogs abdomen to obtain a sterile urine sample... and I got it in first try! Vaguely remember trying to do this with Anna on an obese little dog back in Denmark and not having any luck.

Yesterday I decided to be more adventurous and see two patients, this ended in disaster, running around the corridors in a mad frenzy trying to submit all my urine and blood samples, as well as having both patients ultrasounded. This resulted in lunch being eaten at 3:30 in the afternoon, no dinner, finally came home at 11:15, exhausted. One patient, a diabetic cat was admitted, and put on IV fluids for the night, with corresponding paperwork and total confusion for me, trying to figure out how the bl..*&%. IV machine works, had to make several trips downstairs to the supply store to get more supplies, tubing and such. Fortunately everyone has been very helpful and I can ask anyone for help. I ask millions of questions every day....

Then I had to be here at 7 am this morning to submit more blood samples and administer insulin to my patient before 8. Today has been better though, did not have to see more patients, concentrate on my diabetic cat. A rare event: got to have lunch at actual luch time! Lots of coce as I am very sleepy from busy day yesterday, as well as only 6 hours of sleep. This morning at 8 I attended "grand rounds" where lots of students and doctors from all the medicine groups gather to talk about interesting cases, very nice, although I hope I will not be made to do a presentation in front of all these people, apparently the lucky student who had the interesting case gets the privilege of presenting it! After that we had our regular rounds with my group: 6 students and 3 teachers. In the morning we discuss the progress of our hospitalized patients and in the afternoon we discuss any patients that came in for treatment and went home the same day. Then we may have discussions and questions from the doctors on various topics. Which reminds me that afternoon rounds are eminent...

Sunnudagsmorgunn og litli sjuklingurinn minn er farin heim med pobbunum sinum (hun a tvo). Frjals! eda thannig, nu verd eg ad fara heim og lesa fyrir morgundaginn. Gisli hringir i mig i dag, vid tolum alltaf saman i simann a sunnudogum. Verd ad vera komin heim fyrir hadegi. Er ad stelast til ad lesa skaldsogu med naminu, skamm, skamm. Bokin heitir "Corellis mandolin", man ekki nafn hofundar, thad er vist buid ad gera biomynd med Nicholas Cage i adalhlutverki, hef ekki sed hana. Bokin er god so far, bara buin ad lesa ca. 50 sidur.

Well, it's saturday night and I still have my little volenteer patient in the hospital. doh. She is very sweet though, a little wire haired fox terrier, I think I would like to have a dog like that sometime. Later when I have my own house and can start collecting animals again.

Had some fun yesterday, went out to dinner with a couple of girls from school. Sushi - again! This time I was wise and had shrimp tempura (deep fried shrimp & vegetables w. rice) as a main course, and just a few pieces of sushi. I like sushi though, wonder why Icelanders didn't come up with eating raw fish like that, guess it's not so hot with potatoes, no rice in Iceland until about 30 years ago... One of the girls also had (see how I said had, tonight my patient is the only one in surgery wards!) a dog in the hospital and so offered to take mine for a walk this morning so I could sleep late, I her up on her offer of course, so I only had to come in tonight to feed & walk. Today was spent reading and then I went downtown, had some spagetti and went for an afternoon movie at 4. Saw "Life or something like it" w. Angelinga Jolie, was ok, but not great. Still waiting to see a great movie. Saw a good movie with her and Antonio Banderas a couple of weeks ago on video when Kat was here visiting her parents. Don't remember the name, but it was very raunchy!! Naked Antonio, uha! Last weekend I saw "Mulholland Drive" on video, bad, bad movie. Don't waste your time seeing it, trust me.

So this is my life in a nutshell. Will discharge my patient tomorrow morning and then go home to read for my medicine rotation which starts monday.

Hi guys, as you can see my blogspot is not filled with words of wisdom every day, very little time for life outside of school... Have seen a lot of cases since my last post, but will not bore you with nasty surgical details. This week has actually been kinda slow as I have not had patients admitted to the hospital to feed, walk etc. However I was clever enough to participate in someone elses surgeries yesterday, and then leave them to do all the work after surgery! he, he. Tomorrow I am taking over a patient from a classmate who has too many, why did I volenteer for this? As previously mentioned I have no life outside of school and came here to learn anyway, the others laughed at my enthousiasm, but I'll show them!!

Last weekend was kinda fun, picnic day here at school. This is like an open house for students parents and alumni to come visit the school. My cousin Maria came to visit me and I got to show her the school, there was even a parade in the morning and in the afternoon we saw "battle of the bands" which is an annual event where brass bands from several colleges compete in a marathon of music. It was a lot of fun, they take turns playing and in one song all the groups joined together and marched through the crowds while they played. They would even do all kinds of stunts with the instruments, like play lying down or standing on one foot. I the evening we went out to dinner, had sushi. I liked it, but have decided that sushi is not well suited for a whole meal, better as appetizer, was kinda bloated after eating all this cold rice... Then we saw a movie "murder by numbers" with Sandra Bullock, it was ok. We tryed to go dancing, but soon discovered that Davis is not very "happening" The only place to dance in town closed at 12:30. We were told that usually they stay open until 2 am, but we were not entirely convinced... More to follow later.

p.s. Sorry Stina og Herdis og Erna, cannot figure out this link business and am too busy to try very hard, will discover some other day the wonderful world of html..

Back in school. This monday I saw a dog who's owner is a Hollywood stuntwoman. My patients today are a 11 month old golden retriever puppy with elbow dysplasia in both elbows. Poor thing. We did an arthroscopy today, that's where you make two small holes in the joint capsule and stick a mini camera in there and remove the offending fragment of bone through another hole with foreceps, like microsurgery. It was very cool to see, the dog only has a couple of sutures insted of cutting open his forearm. He is waking up now, and will probably be able to go for a walk this afternoon. My other patient is a giant 70 kg mastiff (and she's a female, the males are even bigger!). She is a sweet and gentle dog in spite of her size, only not very well trained, so she drags me around when we go for a walk, or when she takes me for a walk! She is having the same procedure done as the other dog.

I cannot believe how cold it is here in California! My mom will be pleased to read that I use the wool scarf she made me take every day! I have heard rumors that the temperature goes to 25-30C during the day, but I don't go out during the day... I go to school between 7 and 8 in the morning, and then I go home around 8 at night. Just in time to eat a little, read my surgery book and then go to sleep... Have to go check on my dog now...

jibbi. Now I have my very own blogspot, I wonder if anyone will read this? I also wonder why I am writing this in english?! Probably for the best as my international fans will want to get a piece of my mind too. They will probably make a movie "inside Sif Traustadottir" ha,ha,ha... Today is the first day at school since I got here to UC Davis vet school that I have some time to myself. Opened a bank account and plan to go to the movies (by myself) this afternoon. Decided to play with the computer for a few minutes and got this great idea to see if I could figure this blog thing out, am very jealous at my friends who have great blogs.