Check please

I was giving a dog a rectal exam at work. This is a normal part of every dog's exam. The dog behaved and when I was done I said to the dog, "see, it wasn't that bad."
The owner replied, "Can I come see you for my exams?"

No sir, I'm sorry. I believe my appointments are all booked.

Undercover

I went to synogague on Friday night with my Grandma. I walked up to her when she was talking to another woman, probably in her 80's. "Oh, is this your grandson?" she asks. "No, this is my grandaughter, Andrea", my grandma says. "Oh, how nice your grandson", the woman says. "Do you know my daughter Eva? This is her daughter, Andrea", my grandma says. At this point I interrupt and introduce myself and again say that my name is Andrea. The woman looks back at me says and says, "well it's nice to meet your grandson!".

Then, not five minutes later, a man comes up and starts talking my grandma. He says to me, "Ya know, I have a grandson about your age, maybe a year older. How old are you? 16?" I start to laugh. "14?" he guesses. "Actually, I'm 26" I tell him. "Oh, well my grandson looks just about your age. I guess he looks old for his age too."

I give up.

What do you get when you mix 2 ducks and a cow?

I'm out at NewBolton Center which is the large animal farm. I definitely out of my element here. I don't have cool leather boots, or belts with horseshoes on them, or even a horse tattoo. The days are long and hard, but I must admit that I love being outside and its definitely a challenge! So far I have two patients -

Mr. Thompson. He is a 15 year old 1,500lb horse. He has chronic eye problems and had surgery and will be here for awhile. He's nice. But scary. Mostly because we weighs 1,500lbs! He's very sweet and we go for walks around the farm.

Tracey. She is a 7 year old Holstein-Fresian cow (black and white spots). She is weak on her feet and can't get up when she falls. So, she's been in a pool for the week. It's called the Aqua Cow. It's a portable tank that looks kind of like a horse trailer that fills up with water and she can stand in the tank. So she's in this tank outside with a tarp over her head to keep her out of the sun. Plus she has two rubber ducks floating with her to keep her company. Sadly, when we take her out of the tank and she falls, we have to use a forklift to get her back up. It's definitely a huge process. But she's also sweet.

Other random things I've seen - a few goats, alpacas, foals. Lots of cute baby things. but they all weigh way too much to really play with. I miss my cats and dogs.

And...to finish the joke...when I was little I told this joke ALL the time. Apparently I thought it was hilarious and cracked myself up whenever I told it:
What do you get when you mix 2 ducks and a cow? Quakers and milk!! (I know...try to contain yourself!)

Clark

Here he is! Isn't he handsome?

Conversation?

Everything you need to know:

Yes you can pet him...it's not an illusion, he is missing a leg....no, he doesnt' have cancer and he was not hit by a car. He was shot.... Yes, by a gun.... No, I don't know who did it. I'm just fostering him. He was in his old owner's backyard and he was shot....no I work at the vet school and he needed a foster home...Yes he's doing very well...it's true. Dogs are amazing.

ps. his name is Clark and he is SOOO cute!

Time warp

Going back in time (Pre-July 4th):
Camping in Jim Thorpe: Drive 1 1/2 hours, sing Ani. Arrive at camping site. Look at all the crazy people. Fear for gay bashing. Check in. Set up camp in the rain. Attempt to light a fire - mission accomplished. Eat blackened hot dogs - yum. Nap. Register for race tomorrow. Fire, almost die from smoke inhalation, dinner, more rain, gin and tonic, sleep.

Wake up, run 4..., poop...mile race, finish in 33 and 34th place. We would've finished sooner if Jonah didn't have to stop to ...admire nature...Get 2nd place medal. Lock Jonah's keys in her car. White water raft 13 miles down the Lehigh River. Call AAA. Go home.

Happy Birthday America

What better way to celebrate America's birthday than by going to the ice cream festival at Penns Landing? $5, one plastic spoon, one big tent, and 20 vendors later, we (Margit, Chelsea, Jonah, Bean, Lucien, and me) ate a ton of ice cream. And mostly felt like we were going to puke.
Luckily Heineken was there to give us shots of beer to wash it down.

Curby, the recycling mascot was giving out "Curby bucks" - fake dollar bills with Curby's picture on them. Don't you think handing out stupid worthless pieces of paper that will be thrown out is counterintuitive to a recycling program?



Then we rounded out the day with some rock band. I'm pretty sure our band got signed. We're going on tour next month. Lucien was especially good at the blue and green half of the drums.

Oh yeah, happy 4th of July. Yay America.

Facelift

My blog is new and improved. So I never finished my Hungary trip. It was too long ago, I don't remember. Actually I just don't have the patience to type it all out. To sum it up: it was great.

Since I got back from Hungary I've started clinics at UPenn which is where I'll be spending the next year of my life. I keep having all these weird things happen to me and I wish that I would write them down so I can remember them (so it doesn't end up like Hungary). Thus - we have this blog.

Just to bring you up to speed, here are some random weird things that have happened to be at the hospital:

1. A woman brought her dog in that was limping. The story? The woman's fiance is paralyzed and is in a wheelchair. She (the woman), was fooling around in his wheelchair trying to pop a wheelie. Apparently, not the most experienced in wheelchair wheelies, she tipped over in the wheelchair which fell over on the dog and broke THREE of its legs. And, to boot, she had $100 to fix him.
Life lesson learned: It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

2. A client dropped of a urine sample in a female condom.
Did you not have tupperware? A plastic cup? Even a little double-bagged ziploc?
Life lesson learned: Don't buy more than you need. You can always go back and buy more.

More valuable lessons will be forthcoming. Stay tuned.

A 5 star hotel

…is definitely NOT where we stayed last night. When we got into Gyor we dropped our bags off at the first place we could find and went around the city. Our room (for the 3 of us) has three single beds (2 pushed together) and smells of stale smoke. The bathroom has an old toilet where you have to pull the cord above your head to flush. The shower has no curtain and our towels are the size of a washcloth and there are certainly no mints on the pillow. Aunt Marika and Mom say we’re not staying here another night – thank god.

Yesterday we went on a wild goose chase to find the cemetery where my Grandfather’s parents and brother are buried (they died before the war). We started walking in the general area where Marika says it is. She says it’s just “around the corner from the synagogue”. First, the synagogue is now a music school. No one knew anything about the synagogue except there was a small marker for the children of Gyor in the courtyard. So keep wandering around asking any person we can find. We finally ask an old guy who points us in the right direction. We walk for 20 minutes and arrive at the Roman Catholic cemetery. Perfect. Luckily the keeper of this cemetery can point us in the right direction so we finally arrive and it closed at 5. It’s 5:30. So we bang on the big iron gate (there is a family living next to the cemetery that takes care of it) and they thankfully let us is. The guy said it’s hard to be on time when you’re coming from America.

Part II will have to wait. No time to type. xoxo

Ez a muchka?

Now that hockey is over the touring part of the trip can begin. This morning I woke up to my morning wake up call from Marika at 8am (no one is surprised) and after breakfast we went to what is called Tupoltza or a cave bath in Miskolc. Basically it's an indoor lazy-river type thing. It was relaxing and nice to be in the water and then we got a short massage which felt great after a week of hockey. It was slightly weird because you just strip down and there is no towel covering you anywhere and a guy that works there randomly walks in and out of the room, regardless of whether or not you have clothes on. So much for modesty!

After that we hopped on a train for the 2 hour ride to Budapest. Some of us unloaded our crackers and wine and others unloaded their whole grain no taste bread and we all had a snack. When we got to Budapest we were met by Janosh, his wife Ildi, and Mark. Janosh is my Grandfather's first cousin and Mark is my age AND he speaks excellent English. We went to The Great Synagogue which is the largest one in the world. It was built in 1859 and is absolutely amazing. It's a great mix of past and present. It serves as the border for where the Jewish ghetto was during WWII and you can see a cemetery that holds many of the people that died while in the ghetto. The synagogue itself is so beautiful. It's HUGE. There are two levels of balconies all around and the pulpit is so bit and extends so high up and has a huge pipe organ and....it's so hard to explain. I'll put pictures up soon. All I can really say is that it took my breath away. It was easy to imagine the thousands of people the must have gathered there for services each week.
One thing that I did notice was that on the tour of Budapest that I took earlier in the week and in all the tour books the synagogue is never mentioned. The Jewish quarter that used to be so impressive is long gone and it's almost as if no one noticed. They said 400,000 Jews were transported out of Hungary is 53 days...or maybe it was 35 days...Either way, it's hard to even fathom this number. The family we were with had never been inside the shul, so we joked that it was a good thing the Americans came so that they could go on a tour of Budapest.

Onward....to The Gerboud! This was my Grandfather's favorite place. It's an old pastry shop that has been around for 150 years. We all sat ourside and picked out a few pastries that were delicious. Actually, I'm not sure it was even that good, I think I've just heard so much about this place that it could've tasted like glue and I would have loved it.

I've realized that the food in Hungary is not just food to me. It's my family. The Hungarian food we eat is really one of the main connections that I have to Hungary and that I associate with family events. So when I'm here and I get to eat palacinta or chicken paprikash it really makes me think of my family.

...Next we went to Fatal (Fuh-tahl) "wooden spoon" for dinner. I thought we got huge portions in America, but the plates here were humongous. Mom and I split cherry soup (cold) which was great. It was really nice to talk with Mark, Janosh, and Ildi. They are all very sweet.

Now we're at Agi's house for the night. (she is also a distant cousin). Tomorrow we'll go back to the open market and then we'll hop on the train to Gyor.

In good news, after a long lesson, Marika now knows how to send email on AOL all by herself. So don't let her give you any excuses. And, i'm pretty sure she ate a small bite of my paprikash AND a bite of chocolate cake to supplement her fish soup and steamed veggies.

Love you all and miss you!
Uhn-dray-uh, Ay-vuh, and Muh-ree-ka

Last Day of Games

Well, today is the last day. I can't believe how quickly the week flew by. The first couple days I felt nervous and I wasn't sure how I was going to make it through the week. Now, I wish there were still more days. I guess it always works out that way. I've been slacking on the blogs lately so I'll have to catch you up.

Thursday we had another day off and we went into Budapest. It was an amazing fun day. 9 of us took the 2 hour drive down and we started out in Hero's Square which is right in the middle of the city. It's got like two blocks of flat stone laid on the ground and then these HUGE statues jutting up in the middle. Visually it was pretty neat. Then we went to a castle, the citadel (which is a monument thanking the Russian army for giving Hungary back their independence - how nice of them). Then we went to this open air market that was so fun. I bought a palacinta for 90 forint (50cents!). They had every kind of meat, cheese, fruit, pastry, paprika, tablecloths, dolls, tshirts etc... that you would never use but at the moment it all seems like the best thing in the world to buy. I controlled myself and mostly just bought more palacinta. Then we took a nice stroll along the banks of the Danube which separates Buda from Pest. (Walking along the Danube is almost as nice as the Schuylkill...well, almost) It's a beautiful city which huge bridges spanning the river that were really nice to look at. It helped that we had a 70 degree day. After that we ate dinner at a great Hungarian restaurant and then went to a church which was probably one of the biggest churches I've ever seen. I think it was Matthius Church. They have all the buildings beautifully lit and it was just a really great day. At one of the castles there was a sign that had some Hungarian words and one of them was csilug (chee-lug) and I yelled, that's what my Grandma calls me! In Hungarian Csilug means "star" I think someone explained it like "the light of my life". It made me smile and think of her.

Tonight Mom and Marika come and they'll get to watch me work my last game. Hungary vs. Korea. I'm excited they'll get to see me work and just to see them in general. Tomorrow everyone else is leaving and I think we're going to go to a cave bath (I think it's kind of like a spa/pool type thing) and then on a tour before we head back to Agi's house in Budapest.

I guess I should start packing. Last call for any requests of gifts to bring home!

True Life: I ate a ball of lard

The gracious IIHF (international ice hockey federation) decided to take all the referees and coaches and staff out to a nice banquet dinner. We all dressed up and got shuttled to this very upscale restaurant. Before dinner we were each served two shots of liquor. One clear, one dark brown. Some guy stood up and spoke Russian which was then translated into Hungarian and then into English thanking us for a great tournament, welcome to Hungary etc. I'm sure nothing was lost in the dual translation. The drink was, among other things, very strong. I think they were saying it's 60% alcohol. I thought I was going to throw up at the table. I couldn't wait for the food to come out so I would stop salivating from the drink and get a good taste in my mouth.

In comes the appetizer: goose liver. I like chopped liver, but this was huge hunks of liver. As if I had taken a goose in anatomy class, cut out the liver in its entirety and served it on a plate. But hey, that's okay. I can try new things. So I survey my plate: goose liver, cucumber, onion, tomato and yellow balls with paprika sprinkled on top. Logically, I think - butter. I pick up a piece of toast and take one of the balls and spread it on the bread, add a little goose liver, lots of cucumber onion and tomato. Truth be told, it wasn't all that bad. But I only had the one bite. I was starving so I just ate the toast with the little butter balls until one of the Slovakian girls ate the ball thinking it was a potato. Turns out we were both wrong - it's lard. So, yeah...i ate two balls of lard before dinner.
The rest of the dinner was great. Meat, potatoes, vegetables, ice cream for dessert. More toasts for different things, but this time I didn't drink the alcohol. I stuck with Fanta.

A woman I met the other day brought us home-made palacinta (crepes) that were delicious. But, honestly, I have to say, Grandma's are better. I like the way Grandma's chocolate isn't quite melted all the way and it's a little bit crunchy. (someone please call her and tell her the good news).

In musical news...today at breakfast I heard En Vogue, followed by Tegan and Sara, then Sting. They pride themselves on their eclectic musical taste.

Back to the rink I go. I'm having a great time and miss everyone at home!

Day Harem (ha-rum – Day 3)

Two games down! So far so good.

Hockey News:
My first game was Hungary vs. Croatia. All of Hungary’s games are at night so they draw a pretty good crowd. I’d say a few hundred people. The fans here are unbelievable. They have air horns and these crazy noisemakers that sound like an animal is dying. So imagine you’re stuck in rush hour traffic with someone constantly beeping their horn. Now imagine several Duck Tours going by (those of you who live in Philly know what I mean). Now think about that lasting for 2 hours. In all actuality, it’s pretty exciting to skate in front of fans. The Hungarian fans have this cheer that goes, “We are, we are, Hungary” but their accents manage to make it rhyme. It sounds more like “We aah, we aah, hungaree-yah”. Also entertaining. One woman in the stands was blowing a whistle. Now, you might think she would realize when you blow a whistle at a sporting event where referees also use whistles that it might be confusing. She told the security she had just bought it special for our game to cheer.

My second game was also pretty good. Croatia vs. Korea. It went into overtime and a shootout and Korea actually won. It’s really interesting to see the different styles of play. Korea is very disciplined and technical, but they don’t really show any aggression which doesn’t bode too well for them in hockey. But other teams just go crazy all over the place with no idea of where they are supposed to be. So it’s an interesting mix. Some of the players speak English, some don’t. Some just pretend they don’t. But it makes communicating with them challenging and sometimes funny. You can explain things to them and they just stare blankly back at you.

In Other News, we all went to the supermarket and oohed aahed at all the different food. Mostly tons of meat and cheese. I bought some great pastries and water with no gas. For those of you who like drinking plain seltzer water all the time, you’ll fit in great here and should order your water “with gas”.

Today is our day off and we went on a tour of the hotel palace which is this fancy hotel from the 1930's that has a lot of history and then we went to a trout farm which, you might imagine, I thought was pretty cool. It was a family run farm in the middle of the mountains. They fed us huge chunks of smoked trout with paprika and wine. Not something I'd normally eat, but they say it's all about the experience.

Day Egy (Day One)

I'm in Hungary! All off the IIHF officials are staying in a beautiful hotel in the center of Miskolc. My roommate is a girl who is also from Hungary. All of the other girls seem really nice but I can't for the life of me remember all of their names, let alone pronounce them. Luckily, our supervisor is from Canada and I can't tell you how nice it is to hear another person speak English. It really gets tiring trying to communicate with a language barrier, although all of the girls speak English to one extent or another.
I feel like the dumb American - I'm not even sure I can point out all of the countries everyone is from: Finland, Netherlands, Japan, Croatia, Estonia, Slovakia, Czech Republic...and some others that I haven't even figured out yet.

Rewind to yesterday - my flight was canceled from Philly to JFK but after freaking out all morning I arrived to JFK in plenty of time. As luck would have it, while waiting for 3 hours in JFK an older couple sat next to me and the woman starting asking where I am from, what I do etc. "Oh really?! You're a vet student? Wow! That's great. You'll love this story. We used to own this horse once...." Needless to say I tried to look impressed and amazed when she told me that her horse must have sensed she was trying to help it when it was down on a pile of logs and they had to pull each and every log out from under the horse so that it could rise again. I told her it was a heartwarming story.

Back to Hungary...It's terrible that I understand about zero of what is being said here. I can find goulash and paprikash on the menu, but that's about it. If anyone needs me to count to 10 though, I will surely impress them. The money here is called Forint. I have a 10,000 forint bill. Unfortunately, it's not worth very much. But it looks cool to carry around.

The televisions here all play a weird variety of American music. I watched the Thriller video at breakfast this morning (an all time favorite) and heard YMCA in Hungarian yesterday in the car.

On a more sentimental note, it feels really amazing to know that I am in the country where my mom is from. I look at little kids speaking Hungarian and picture my mom. I saw a woman on the plane yesterday that looked like every Hungarian family friend we have. She had dark hair, slightly curly, was wearing one of those silk shirts that my grandma always used to wear, and the wrinkles on her face looked JUST like Grandma and Maca's (my grandma's sister). To me, in my head, it's kind of what I imagined every Hungarian to look like. I keep waiting to see an old man with a furry hat and a long trench coat so I can think of my grandfather. I think I came during the wrong season for that.


So far, it's great to be here. I have a game today at 7:30pm. Hungary vs. Croatia. I'll keep you posted.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot -
DAY OF THE WORD: Focah (Foo-cuh). It means "sea lion"(We get animal planet in Hungarian).

Pre-trip

Tomorrow (Friday) I'm leaving for Hungary. I fly out at 5pm from Philadelphia. I go to JFK then arrive in Budapest Saturday morning. They say I'll be picked up by someone who will take me to Miskolc which is a city in the northeast part of the country. I hope the guy that picks me up holds up a little sign that has my name on it. I always thought that would be cool.

A brief synopsis of my trip:
Week 1: IIHF Women's Division III World Championships in Miskolc
Week 2: Travel Hungary with my Mom and Aunt Marika including Budapest, Papa and Gyor.

I'm really excited but a little nervous too. I think everything is packed, and hopefully not overweight. Since I'm guessing most of you don't know any Hungarian, and really, either do I; I thought we should brush up on some important terminology.

PHRASE OF THE DAY: Nem kerek uloot-tay (I don't like sour cream)

I've never had a blog but I'll do my best to update this, hopefully even with pictures if i can figure it out.

I'd also like to say that this blog was inspired by Kirsten. I check her blog almost daily and I have to admit I'm slightly disappointed when her busy life gets in the way of her important blogging.