4 weeks to go!

Yesterday it was exactly four weeks until I travel to Kosice. The time has gone so quickly and I feel like I still have so much to do in the next few weeks!

I have sorted out my Caxton FX card which is a prepaid currency card. It means I can load money onto it online from my UK bank accounts and then use it in ATMs and card machines in Europe without any extra fees. I'm hoping to use this for the whole course rather than opening a Slovak bank account. It was really easy to set up, and compares favourably to other prepaid currency cards I looked at, some of which charged a fee per transaction or for inactivity.

This will make me seem a bit too keen but I've already packed my suitcase! I wanted to make sure I could fit everything in a while in advance so I'd know whether I need to pay for a second suitcase. It looks like I'll just about have room for everything, and I've paid for extra hand luggage so I should manage to fit everything else I need in there. The vacuum storage bags have been a life saver. There's no way I'd have fitted everything in without them! I'm also thankful for the 32kg weight limit with Wizz Air because my suitcase weighs in at about 27kg!! I'm used to travelling light so I think it's the heaviest suitcase I've every packed.

The bus from Budapest to Kosice is all booked! I'm travelling with some other new students so we can all get lost together.

I'm also trying to get the animals sorted out before I leave and my mum takes over their care. Pipkin my netherland dwarf rabbit has chronic dental problems and he's having a bit of a flare up at the moment. His tooth roots are very elongated which causes inflammation and infection. I've switched him from zithromax (which didn't seem to be working) to baytril today so hopefully he'll see some improvement very soon. The vet mentioned that we might have to think about having some of his molars taken out but I want to leave that as a very last resort because we've managed to sort his problems out with a course of antibiotics before (also I'm scared!).

The buns have a nice new hutch and run combo because their old one was getting a bit tatty and I was worried about bits breaking off while I'm away! My next project is to do up the aviary and hopefully get electricity installed so we can have a light up there.

I have another day off tomorrow (two in a row! :D) so I'm going to make a trip to Wickes to pick up some stuff for the aviary.

Bye for now!

Lucy

Preparing for the big move

So my flight to Budapest is all booked! In just under 7 weeks I will be in Slovakia.

It might be a bit early but I have started packing already. I'm usually a very light packer but I keep worrying that I'm going to forget something important. The suitcase I'm using is quite large but super light so it won't take up too much of the weight allowance. To save space in the suitcase I'm packing all my clothes in vacuum storage bags which shrink everything down into the smallest possible space! I'm planning to buy kitchen stuff and bedding when I'm there to save space, and all I'm really taking is clothes and the bare essentials.

I've also been sorting out getting my A level certificates apostilled. This is a requirement by the university to make sure students graduated school. The apostille legalizes the document for use in countries outside the UK. It took a while for me to wrap my head around the process but I'm nearly sorted now so here's what needs doing as simply as I can write it for any other prospective students.

1. Your A level certificates first need to be copied and the copy notarised by a notary public. This cost me £60 for two documents but I think it varies by notary. You can find a notary in your area easily through Google. It might be worth ringing round a few to see if you can get it cheaper.

2. Once this is done you are able to send them off yourself to the legalisation office. You have to fill in the application form that can be found on the website, pay the fee online and then send the application form, confirmation of payment and your notarised certificates off to the address given.

3. When you arrive in Slovakia these apostilled documents need to be translated into Slovak. I've heard it's cheaper to get it done over there so that's what I'm planning to do. I haven't done this part yet so don't have any more info!

One more thing I will say for people planning on travelling with Wizz Air is check the flight prices several different times during the day over a few days and watch for a pattern before booking! I checked my chosen flight one week day morning and it was only £30 (previously when I had booked it had been £40-£50). I had to rush off to work but planned to sort the flight out when I arrived home. By that time it had gone back up to £50! I checked each morning and a few days later it had gone back down to £30 so I booked it straight away. I know it's not a huge amount of money in the scheme of things but it will add up if you're flying back and forth a lot.

That's all for now!

Lucy

NYC Days 3 & 4!

This post has taken quite a bit longer than I'd hoped, sorry!

On our third day in New York we spent the morning in Central Park just having a wander. We only walked about a third of the way into the park in the end. I didn't really realise how big it is but it's about 800 acres which is bigger than the zoo I work at (600 acres) and that feels massive!
 
The park was very peaceful although still quite busy. It was just a nice change of pace from the rest of our time in New York.  It was really weird being surrounded by green but seeing the skyscrapers either side.

I had seen some black squirrels on my first trip to Central Park in the early evening of the first day, but I didn't see any on my second visit. I did however see a cardinal which I know are not particularly rare but I had never seen one before and it's quite a surprise to see a flash of red go by when we don't have any birds of that colour at home in the UK.

We left Central Park at about lunch time and headed back towards the hotel to the pizza place right next door. My sister said it was the best pizza she'd ever had. I probably wouldn't go that far but it was really good and not too expensive either. The restaurant is called Angelo's Pizza and is very convenient for people staying at the Salisbury Hotel next door (just in case anyone is thinking of staying there!).

The afternoon was pretty relaxed, we just had another look at Fifth Avenue and went to sit in the Apple store for a bit (free wi fi! :) ).

In the evening we went to see Matilda the musical. Times Square was sooo busy that evening. We encountered a hold up in front of a store called Oakleys where they were holding some online music awards and Andrew WK was sitting in the window playing drums with one of the Ramones. We had to hurry past to get to the theatre on time but I'll come back to this later in the post!

The musical was so good! I had been wanting to see it on the West End since it won lots of awards last year, including the Olivier award for best actor in a musical won by Bertie Carvel for playing Miss Trunchbull. He was also in the Broadway production and I could see why he won the award, Miss Trunchbull was hilarious!

I wasn't sure I would like the songs much since I hadn't heard any of them before but they were really good and very clever. I'm going to try to get to see the West End production later in the year because I'd like to see it again. It's the sort of thing you will pick new things up in each show, I think.

On day three we didn't do much. We went to Macy's in the morning on the request of my mum (neither me or my sister really like shopping!) but she didn't like it in there that much, surprisingly. We had visited a Macy's in Florida and apparently she preferred that one! It probably didn't help that the store was being renovated while we were there but it was quite a disappointing trip compared to the rest of the week.

We walked back to the hotel through Times Square and when we walked past the Oakley store Andrew WK was there drumming AGAIN with someone different this time. Apparently he was attempting a 24 hour drum session record, which he did complete later that day!

After packing during the afternoon, me and my mum returned to the Rockefeller Centre in the evening so that we could visit the observation deck in the dark. It was pretty impressive to see the whole city lit up. I did try to take some photos but they didn't come out great.

The next day we were up at 4.30 to get to the airport for our flight home. I think the time we went for was long enough for one trip, but there were plenty of things we could have done if we had more time there. We'll have to save those up for our next visit!

So that's the last post on my New York trip. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I got home but time seems to have been running away from me for the past few months! In two months I'll be off to Slovakia and I bet that time will be gone before I realise.

Bye for now!

Lucy

NYC Day 2!

Day 2 we went to the Rockefeller centre and visited the Top of the Rock observation deck on the 70th floor. I don't think I've ever been that high up in a building before but the view was amazing. We could see the whole of Central Park and also the Empire State building and the new World Trade Centre One tower which is nearly finished. It was pretty quiet up there when we went but it was getting busier as we left. We seemed to have a knack for avoiding the crowds all week actually!

After that we walked down 5th Avenue to the Grand Central Terminal which was huge and far too beautiful inside for a train station. We stopped there for lunch where I had the biggest burger ever! It was pretty amazing.

We walked back up 5^th Avenue to get back to the hotel and had a look in some of the shops. They were mostly expensive designer places so we didn’t buy anything except some NYC souvenirs from one of the (many!) gift shops.

In the evening we went to see our first Broadway show, Annie. It was very good and our seats were great despite being pretty cheap! Jane Lynch played Miss Hannigan and I thought she was really good, although I'm not a fan of Glee. It was great being able to see Times Square all lit up when we came out of the theatre, and it was still packed!

I'll post about day 3 and 4 together, hopefully tomorrow.

Bye for now!

Lucy

Luton to Kosice

Just a quick post to say that the Luton to Kosice flights I have been hoping for were announced today! This should make travelling between university and home a lot easier for UK students in Kosice.

The flights are run by Wizz Air who I haven't flown with before but their limit for checked baggage seems better than other airlines (32kg per bag) and they also have a discount scheme which I think would definitely be worth it for students flying to and from Kosice regularly.

The flights will be starting from the 17th September which is the day after term begins so it won't be any good for the first journey out but hopefully it will make travelling home for holidays much easier. Flights will only be twice a week (Tue and Sat) until the end of October when they are upped to four times a week (Sun, Mon, Wed, Fri).
 
Information about the flights can be found here (the site is in Slovak so will need translating if you can't read it) and they can be booked on the Wizz Air website.

New York! Day 1

I know I said that I was going to make this blog just about vet medicine, but I realised that means I won't have an awful lot to write about until I start university in September.

Sooo, this is a post about my recent New York trip :)


I went to New York city with my mum and sister for 5 nights last week for my sister's 21st birthday (which was actually in May, but oh well). It was a fairly hectic few days but we managed to do lots of touristy things and also see two Broadway shows!

I'll spread it out over a few days because otherwise this would be one ridiculously long blog post!

Day 1 we went on a boat tour around the island of Manhattan with Circle Line tours. We got a really good view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island but couldn't visit either because both islands are still closed after hurricane Sandy last year. The tour was really interesting, and we got to see some landmarks and areas of New York that we wouldn't have managed to visit otherwise, like the Brooklyn bridge and the Chrysler building.

After that we wandered over to Times Square and had lunch and a look round the shops. My sister could have spent hours in the Disney shop but we eventually dragged her away. Ooh and we also stumbled across people setting up for the World War Z premiere; there were fans camping out already! We didn't stay for the premiere but it was interesting to see.

In the evening we had a wander around Central Park which was only 2 blocks from our hotel. It was nice and peaceful, but still quite busy!

Speaking of the hotel, it was really cheap so I wasn't expecting much but it was actually really nice. If anyone is thinking of travelling to New York I recommend the Salisbury Hotel. The location was great, we were less than a 5 minute walk from Central Park and about 10 minutes from Times Square and the Rockefeller Centre. Everything we wanted to see was in walking distance. There is also a supermarket opposite that is open 24 hours and a little deli next door that did some hot food. The rooms were clean and larger than I expected, and also not too noisy, although I suspect it is impossible to get a perfectly silent night's sleep anywhere in the city.

I'll post more about the trip tomorrow.

Bye for now!

Lucy

Slovenia..? Scandinavia..?

People seem to have trouble remembering where in the world I am going to study! No one I have spoken to seems to know much about Slovakia, and indeed neither did I before I started researching the vet school there! With the help of Wikipedia and Google I have started to learn about the country and city where I will be living for the majority of the next four years. From what I've found it looks like a lovely place to live, which is good because I won't get a chance to visit before I move out there. 

Slovakia is a small country, even smaller than the UK, with a population size of about 5.4 million. Kosice is the second largest city after the capital Bratislava, but still only has a population of about 240,000. The country is landlocked and bordered by Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Austria and Czech Republic (with which it used to make up Czechoslovakia. It's a part of the world I've never really visited before so I plan to use this opportunity to travel a bit more.

The landscape of Slovakia seems to be full of mountains, caves and castles. I'll leave it to the Slovakia tourism website to provide you with pictures because I obviously don't have any myself yet.

The climate looks pretty good too, with proper summers but also proper snowy winters. Maybe I can take some tips back to the UK for coping with snowy weather! I'm pretty sure the Slovaks don't drop everything at the first flake.

Regarding travel, there are currently no flights directly from the UK to Kosice. The options are flying to Bratislava and getting the train to Kosice, or flying to Budapest, Hungary and getting a taxi. The Budapest option seems to take slightly less time but it's also slightly more expensive. I have read rumours of a flight route opening up between Luton and Kosice which would be ideal, but I'm not getting my hopes up because there have been no confirmations yet.

On another note, I had my last day volunteering at the zoo today :( I will miss it but I'm going to be working more hours in the retail department of the zoo from next week and I need my days off for planning the big move to Slovakia. I will still be volunteering for Tiggywinkles as it's not such a big commitment, so I should still get my animal work fix occasionally!

Bye for now!

Lucy

UVM Kosice

I received my start dates for September yesterday, so I know when I'll be registering, starting the course etc. It's good to have a date in mind so I can start planning my flight over :)

I've been doing lots of research on the university and the city since I applied, so I'll try to summarise what I've found out in this post.

So, the University of Veterinary Medicine in Kosice! There is a bit of information about the university and the veterinary course on its website (here) but I didn't find it that helpful so had to do my own digging.
UVM Kosice runs veterinary medicine courses in both English and Slovak, with a 6-year course for school leavers and a 4-year course for graduates with an animal/science based degree, which is the course I have a place on. Completing the course gets you a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine qualification (DVM) and allows you to register with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) to practice in the UK, same as a graduate from any of the UK universities. There is a list of qualifications accepted by the RCVS here. The course has also been accredited by the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education (EAEVE), the same as all the UK universities.

With tuition fees currently at €7,500 (£6415.91), studying there will work out a lot cheaper than in the UK (where tuition fees are now £9000 per year), especially because living costs in Slovakia are also a lot cheaper. A room in the university dormitories is €111 (£94.96) a MONTH, which you can easily pay per week in halls at a UK uni. I'm not expecting dorms to be the height of luxury but I'm hoping to stick it out for the four years to bring the costs down, as renting a flat seems to be about double the price, although still cheap by UK standards!

The course is in English, but I'm hoping to learn a bit of the Slovak language while I'm out there. I never really studied a language except French at school, and I only remember the very basics. There is a module in Slovak in the first year, but I'm also going to try to learn a few phrases before I get there; I'd like to be able to at least ask for directions! I've found this website which seems like it will be useful, it has recordings of the pronunciation as well as pages of useful phrases.

I'll leave it at that for now, but hopefully my next post will be about the city of Kosice.

So, dovidenia (goodbye)!

Lucy

Costa Rica part II!

I got my degree result back yesterday and... I got a 2.1! Yay! That means I can definitely apply for vet med which is a relief :D
Jo had her toof out yesterday and it went fine. She was a bit wobbly still when she got home but she started eating straight away which is good. She’s now sitting on my lap purring very loudly so I think I am forgiven for leaving her at the vets!
As promised, I’ll finish the tale of my trip to Panama/Costa Rica! Not sure whether anyone is interested but I like talking about it, so :p

We left San San at 4am so we could rush to the Panama/Costa Rica border to get the first bus to Heredia, which is a little town just outside the capital of Costa Rica (San Jose).
This is the super scary bridge to get from one country to the other. You can’t really see from the photo but in some places the gaps between the slats are about a foot wide. Definitely had to watch your step!

The bus ride was the most terrifying 7 hours of my life. I seriously thought we were all going to die. The driver didn’t seem to think that driving through mountains with no barrier at the side of the road was a good enough reason to drop below 70mph.

We did eventually make it to Heredia where we met up with a whole load of other people who had been on different volunteer projects to do the Costa Rica tour with. Our first stop was Samara beach which was another 7 hour coach trip away. We had a much better driver. I think his name may have been Ronald? He was our driver for the rest of the trip anyway and he was amazing J

At Samara beach I tried surfing for the first time. I can’t surf. That is all that will be said on the matter. I am not happy about it, lol. We also kayaked to a little island off shore and ate pineapple. I don’t think I have mentioned this before but pineapple eaten in Costa Rica tastes better than any other pineapple anywhere else in the world. I think it’s because it’s so fresh. But aaaahh, I want some now...

After Samara we moved on to Rincon de la Vieja, a national park in the centre of the country. We stayed on a ranch which was lovely. I could definitely live there! There were some lovely Aussie sheep dogs and their puppies. The puppies were sooo cute. I wanted to steal one!

At the ranch we went on a horse-y hack. My horse didn’t like me very much. He nearly ran me into a tree on several occasions! We rode to a little pool with a waterfall, which everyone decided to jump off of. It was a lot of fun but I got water up my nose L After that we went tubing which is the most fun everrrr! You sit in a little rubber ring and float down the rapids. I got stuck on the rocks a few times and had to wait for someone to come rescue me, lol.

In the afternoon we went on a hike through the national park. The NP is over a volcano, and in some places these “cauldrons” had formed in the ground where the mud was really hot and bubbling. It was very cool. Didn’t see an awful lot of wildlife because there was a big group of us and we probably scared most animals off. We did see a few agoutis and some pretty birds. I can’t remember what species the birds were though.

To end our stay in Rincon de la Vieja we went to a mud spa. We sat in the sauna for a while and then went and got covered in MUD. Which was fun. Not entirely sure what the mud was supposed to do though...

Our next stop was Volcan Arenal, another national park with another volcano. The Arenal volcano is active pretty much all the time. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see it erupting because it was very cloudy while we were there L

In Volcan Arenal we went zip-lining and abseiling. The zip-lining was quite fun, but I got stuck a few times! I had too much air resistance cause I am too big, I think! I have been abseiling before but this time it was quite scary. It was down a waterfall and there were lots of jagged rocks at the bottom. I made it though and then had to climb back up the waterfall via a ladder. It was a long way up and I nearly died a second time! While I was waiting for one of the zip-lines I saw a coati just ambling along. It was very cute!

We then drove to Tortugero, which was back on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. It reminded me a lot of San San which I liked! We stayed in some little lodges in the forest which were looovely. We woke up to lots of jungle sounds! There was loads of wildlife around too. The white-faced capuchin monkeys were so used to humans. They would sneak right up and steal food out of the bins. I managed to get some quite good pictures, although I don’t know how because my camera was so messed up by the humidity that I couldn’t actually see anything on the screen.

There were also lots of howler monkeys around which make a racket! I also saw lots of toucans, poison dart frogs, freshwater turtles, a caiman and a vine snake. We went on a tour down the river in a boat one day and saw a whole family of spider monkeys crossing the river. There must have been at least 10, and some of them were carrying tiny babies with them! Apparently spider monkeys don’t have thumbs. Isn’t that strange?

After Tortugero we went on our white water rafting trip! We were split into “aggressive” groups and “gentle” groups, lol. Unfortunately I had done something to my neck so I decided it was probably better if I went with the gentle group. It may have been a good idea because we still managed to lose people out the raft! White water rafting was a lot of fun. I would love to do it again.

Oooh, and we jumped into the rapids off a rock. That was fun! I remembered to hold my nose this time :D

The trip was split over three days. We rafted to a lodge in the morning of the first day, then the next day we explored around the lodge. We walked up the river bed to a natural water slide which was cool! It was so slippery climbing up to it though.

The day after that we rafted back to civilization and our final stop, the Gandoca-Manzanillo reserve. In Gandoca we met up with Andrey and Erick who were our leaders on the volunteer project which was good! I managed to leave my phone in the taxi back to the hotel though which was very sad L That phone had served me well and I thought it was pretty unfair to lose it in the last couple of days of the trip! We also did some more hiking and found a super cool cave. :D

After that we returned to Heredia to say goodbye to everyone :( Sad times.

I’m sorry this has been so long! I tried to keep everything short but I got a little carried away, lol.

Bye for now!

Lucy