My October break seems ages ago but still I have more to recount. My roommate Bridget and I ended our Italy trip in the Northern city of Milan. Italy any time of year is wonderful but I was beginning to get a bit tired of the rain. We arrived in Milano in the afternoon to drizzle and after depositing our bags at our hostel we went out to explore the city rain coats on hand.

Dear all, This weekend was a blur and went by way too fast. It started with trumpet calls and cheerleaders as I attended my first ever football game from beginning to end. I never really got into football in college which I understand is ridiculous but I am catching on now. We played a Department of Defense school and they just murdered us, we lost by 26 points or something. I definitely do not understand the rules of football and often was cheering for the opponents. The DOD school made the game look truly graceful where as our guys seemed to keep the paramedics quite busy.

Dear all, the weekend dawned cloudy and misty but such is life in Belgium and is no reason to stay at home. The interns and I decide a trip was in order and we rounded up and headed to the nearby city of Ghent. I visited Ghent last year during my October break and was amazed at how well I could navigate our little group. Ghent was teaming with tourists as we unknowingly showed up during the much anticipated Ode Gand; a music festival hosted on and along Ghent’s canals.

It was our first cattle drive since 2001! Prior to that our family had done it every year since 1897.

In 2002, the worst drought in recorded history in our area, we chose not to drive our cattle to the summer mountain range in the Rio Grande National Forest, as our family had every year since 1897, because the 6 mile trek across the base of Greenie Mountain (some of the most arid land in North America) would be too dusty for the calves and we were concerned about dust pneumonia.