Crazy Evenings

I find it is nice to get a day when you can sleep in, relax and not have to worry about what is going on that day for a while longer. This is how most of my days start out. I don't usually start classes until the afternoon which is nice until I start getting piles of things happening in the evenings!

I woke up this morning excited about a full afternoon but also trying to figure out how I was going to do everything. I was supposed to have a chemistry lab this afternoon, but for some reason the class was cancelled (again my understanding of what is going on here is limited sometimes). This was at 1 PM so I had another 2 hours until my next class, and my next class was one that I was really looking forward to.

My second (technically first) class of today was my veterinary class! Or, in swedish, Djursjukvård. Today we saw a practical of floating horses teeth, or for the non horse people: filing them down, as well as a horse castration. Horses chew in a circular motion, as do cows, so they develop sharp edges on the sides of their teeth. If these edges are not filed down they can cut into the cheeks of the horses which is very painful. This causes the horses to try to cushion the tender area with chewed hay which can cause infection as the hay starts to rot in their mouth. Next was the castration of a frightened little stallion by the name of Highlander. I will not get into details with this but it was interesting and gross at the same time.

Right after my veterinary experience I was off to ride a horse. A friend set me up with a girl here who can't ride and so uses her horse for driving but wants it to be ridden. I have the pleasure of helping her out! When I first sat on Jamarah she had not been ridden in a year, and she is 7 so her riding experience has been slim even before her year off. I'm having fun teaching her how to be ridden and be under saddle. I can't ride her for too long because even though she has great endurance for cart driving she is not used to having the weight on top of her instead of behind her. I also had to cut my ride short today for I had to rush off to the matsal (cafeteria).

Here at Bollerup the students can purchase apparel with our name on it, so at 6 30 tonight I had to rush from riding to try on clothing. At Bollerup also we don't just get a jacket, there is a whole package! This package includes: a jacket with my name on it and the Bollerup logo, a long sleeve shirt with my name on it, a polo with my name on it, a pair of steel toe paddock boots, a pair of gloves and a sweatshirt with my name on it (and the Bollerup logo on everything except the boots and gloves)

From this I had to rush off to Gammal Ko to spend time with Fay before we went out riding. I had to rush because I was supposed to be out at the riding ring at 7 25, and at 6 55 I was just on my way back to the barn from trying on clothing. The lovely little mare is calming down nicely, and was really sweet and cuddly again. Today we did more riding then we have before. She was the best today then she has ever been before, listening to me nicely, moving forward when I ask her and we did canter today as well! She did everything without much hesitation or complaint, like a little lady. The little mare got quite tired though!

Finally at 8 30 PM I was done with everything and could finally head back to my room. Exhausted from going none stop for 5.5 hours I write to you. Now I will be up for a little longer to study some more swedish to try to catch up and maybe understand a little more of what is going on tomorrow!

Looking at my School

I was checking out my brother, Sebastian's, blog and I realized that I have no photos of my school up. So this first photo is of the barn. The central part with the big doorway leads into the courtyard and to the right of it is the horse veterinary clinic. To the left of the doorway is the barn, its called "gammal ko" or old cow.

This next photo is of my house. It's called Äpplet. It's not super nice from the outside but I will have more photos of the inside soon, it's not that special either but it looks better than the outside.

This last photo is of the castle at our school, my brother and I are standing there by the door. It is really old, not sure how old (I can look that up) and is surrounded by a moat. Yes, a real moat.

That's all for now, today was normal. Wakeup for swedish lesson and then photography at 3 followed by history at 5 30.

Fay

This here is a photo of the 3 year old mare that I'm working with right now, Fay. As I was taking her in from the field that her and the other young mares live in she was biting and chewing at her lead rope like you see young puppies do with their leashes, super cute.

Turning Experience

So I used to think that having a blog would be really lame and no one would read it, but today made me think that I have people at home who might appreciate to know what I'm going through here in Sweden.

It started with a 6 AM wakeup from my clock, followed by half an hour of avoiding getting up for the day. At 7 I needed to be out and heading to breakfast as my classes started at 7 30. I'm used to not knowing fully what is going on now, and I usually can understand what will happen through context, but today I was standing in line (and I didn't realize I was standing in line until it started moving in one direction) because someone was doing "blåsigt". To me that meant that they were going to blow the isles so that it was clean, soon did I discover they were doing alcohol breathalyzer tests on us... at 7 30 AM on a Tuesday. Just in case we were out partying on Monday night, at school. After this, and yes mum the alcohol level of my breath was 0.00, my classes started.
Finally my class started, it was my young horse class where we are working with the 3 year olds who were broken in last year. In a few weeks we will be starting with 2 year olds who we will be breaking in ourselves! The 3 year olds we are working with now are just so that they remember how to do everything and so that we learn how to train young horses before we are left on our own. I am working with a super cute little mare named Fay who is really snuggly and is quite spooky. She loves being touched and groomed and petted, but she is scared of most things and I like to show here everything I am going to use/put on her, otherwise she shy's away from it. This went well, we were doing lunging where you have two lunge lines (one on each side of the horse) and they go through the training roller so that it simulates having two reins (if anyone can remember what this is called I would appreciate a comment). After that we got on and Fay did really well and she is coming along great.
Then at 10 AM and I started my second class which was hästkunskap, or horse knowledge, in which we went over the conformation of various horses in the barn. This was interesting for me as we had really detailed cards and I could look at them and compare how we name things in english with how they are named in swedish (we have more interesting names in english).
Riding lesson started at 1, I'm riding a 6 year old mare who hasn't been a school horse for long so is still getting the hang of things. We did jumping today, though we just only 2 ft. I need to work on jumping small fences.
After this I had to help muck out the entire barn and sweep the isles and fill the stalls (they use straw here which I find really annoying to muck out).

Now I'm off to ride a friends horse as she somehow got a concussion walking into a pole, and then I have Friskis och Svettis (basically aerobics) at 7 15 tonight.

This will be my Tuesday (basically) for the rest of the year! Hope this was an interesting read, if you have any questions leave a comment!