In The Beginning

The fateful day arrived this Tuesday(12/15/09) and was greeted with some nerves and much anticipation. Monday night I set an alarm on my phone to wake me up at 7:30 (since I've been waking up sometime between 8:15 and 10:00 for the past five months.) Strangely enough as I went to bed that night I felt fine. There were no butterflies in my stomach or tense nerves in any part of my body. Even my brain, which normally runs crazy analyzing and over analyzing and over anticipating was calm and relaxed. The only thing that had me really "worried" was that I didn't know which room to enter when I arrived.

I went to bed with a peace I've only experienced a couple of times, a peace and ease of mind that only comes from God. (Thanks God, I needed that, really)


[This is what it says on the back of our school shirts. Neat huh?]

I slept soundly, though my body was still full of expectancy, but was wide awake come 7:00 a.m. My alarm hasn't gone off yet... I thought groggily as I contemplated just laying in bed, but my nervous system was too pumped and ready to go, so I hopped out of bed and headed to the shower. Surprisingly I was in and out before my alarm (which was now set for 7:15 after I added a Snooze Allowance [ ;) ]) had gone off. Hmmm, I did that really quickly!
It's not that I take long showers, but I do like to just kinda stand in the warm water for a while. But when ones nerves are excited and they know they're in a time crunch miracles can happen :D

My father and I jumped in the car and raced off to the International Institute of Cosmetology(herein after known as International or IIC, or just school). We arrived about 15 minutes earlier than planned. I tried to open both the front and back door and found that they were locked. We waited a little longer until we saw some of the other not-as-new-as-I-am students go in.
It felt odd getting out of the car, in an unfamiliar and strange place, and having my dad drive away with an "I love you" and "goodbye." Now I was on my own.
I walked into a room with stations set up along the entirety of each wall. Each station had a large black gym-like bag, a black and metal case(like what they use in special agent movies), and seven boxes stacked on top of the counters. I was directed to the space the kits with my name on top and took a seat. We were encouraged to take part in the "welcome" continental breakfast - consisting of DD doughnuts and coffee.
We all sat at our stations, quietly sipping our December 2009


We all sat there quietly sipping our very hot coffee as one of the directors explained dress codes and how to clock in and out of school. (It's pretty cool, we each have our own code and there's a machine that reads the length and size of our hands to make sure that someone else isn't clocking us in and out)

As the day progressed we went over all our equipment and mannequins, eventually wetting down one of our SEVEN mannequin heads. (It was really creepy loading them all into the trunk, individually wrapped in clear plastic bags at the end of the day...) That afternoon we learned two ways of sectioning, and how to section each part of those sections.

That awkward first day ended silently as we all packed up our 50 lbs. of new stuff and headed home with stiff backs and aching feet.

Here are some of the goodies I brought home that day :D

These are my Le' Marca hair shears. These are very professional, and very sharp, scissors that I will be using on real people when I reach the mark of 200 hours of training and go from mannequins to humans.

aren't they pretty?

This is one of my two straight razors. Don't worry, I'll be trained properly and have enough mental health so when I get to use them I won't pull a Sweeney Todd...on most people.

This is Jesus (or John the Baptist) my male mannequin. Each mannequin has it's own little punny name on the back of their neck, but this guy has some weird ghetto name that starts with M...but for the life of me I can't remember what it is, but it doesn't matter cause he doesn't look like the name they gave him, so I changed it ;)

Plop went the mannequins, ready for inspection by my family. My dad wanted to sit them in our windows, next to the Christmas window candles, to freak out the neighbors. Oh dad.

all my junk.

My fancy smancy kit.

this is the little emo guy emblem of IIC.