So much fun, too little time

This week has been pretty much amazing. We've done alot but it was so much fun and informative. The vet school was absolutely superb. The hands on experience was very cool because I had never handled a cow like that. I've pushed them around the pasture but I've never been able to give an injection or listen to their rumen and I'm so glad we got to experience that. I even sat on a cow's neck! The students that we were shadowing were also really nice. I had one girl pull me into a stall to help her but she couldn't really speak english. She still got me to do what I needed to do because she smiled the whole time and didn't get frustrated when she couldn't remember a certain word. I am really grateful for those kind of people since it really helps me out and I'm sure everyone else in the group to have a patient person try to help you out. On the tour of the cattle clinic we also learned a few differences between how we would practice bovine medicine as compared to how they do. Apparently, and it makes total sense I just never thought about it, some of the drugs we use in America are not legal to use here in Germany, but it makes no difference to them because they use the drugs they have and we use the drugs we have. Everything else has been really similar, which shouldn't be very surprising sense we aren't in a third world country or anything and they have top notch doctors and medicines.
The fish presentation was not too bad. Unfortunately he chose to just give a power point presentation in a dark room so it made it a little hard for us to stay awake, but we still learned alot. For instance, I have never thought about doing surgery on a fish, but it happens. We also talked about some of the parasites that fish can get, specifically the pectoralis, or sea lice, that he had worked with. Again, I had never thought about these things. When I hear about fish, I think about the catfish or trout that will be on my plate covered in butter. It was an interested perspective to take so I found the whole thing very informative. So all in all, this week has taught me alot and shown me things that I never would have thought to even look at, which I guess is kind of the point of this trip so kudos to everyone who set up these excursions.