Day 29: Tattoos and Piercings?

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Today started off as a very good day. Everyone woke up with smiles on their faces, and everyone looked really cute for school. My entire room just had a vibe that it was going to be a good day – we got ready for school listening to music and enjoying ourselves. School was fine – I was really tired because I didn’t sleep much the night before. But since it was the last day of class I was pretty excited. We talked about rivers and streams – Dr. Ostrom taught me pretty much the same stuff this past spring so it was a pretty easy lecture. After class we went to lunch. Although lunch was pretty awful it still didn’t ruin the great day we had going on. The weather could not have been nicer – there were blue skies and almost no clouds.

When we arrived back at the hotel, I went to pick up my laundry. I went there, and as I was there Lindsey was just leaving and told me she was going to get her tattoo. I wanted to see her get it, so I decided to go with her. Then, on a whim, I decided to get my cartilage pierced. We went to several tattoo places first, but all of them wanted to charge her a lot of money for 4 small ants. Finally we found a place that was only going to charge her 25 dollars. As she was getting ready, Lianne and I decided to go around the corner to get my ear pierced. Shawna M. and Stephanie O. got piercings from the same place a couple days before, and it looked really legit and sterile.

I tried not to take too long to decide what earring to get because I knew if I waited any longer I would chicken out and not get it done. I decided on a surgical steel post with a light blue stone. It’s not too big and looks good with my eyes according to the guy who pierced me. He cleaned my ear for a solid 2 minutes straight; autoclaved the earring, opened all the tools in front of me, and was very careful as to what he touched with his gloves on. Lianne took pictures for me since I didn’t have my camera, and a friend of one of the workers watched and laughed at me as I freaked out. It barely hurt at all – maybe 10 seconds of pain as the needle went through all the way and then nothing. I was very surprised at how well I did.

By the time Lianne and I returned to the tattoo place, Lindsey’s tattoo was already finished. Luckily Louis was there to take pictures. Thinking back I am glad I didn’t see it happen because between getting my ear pierced and watching a tattoo I think I would have gotten sick or passed out. (Part of that was because I hadn’t eaten much at lunch, and it was a long time earlier). We returned to the hotel in time for dinner, ate dinner, then all went upstairs to study for our final exam.

Studying took place until late in the night and continued early in the morning again. I was really impressed with Shawna because she read her entire text book for her Conservation Biology class. I spent my time studying going over oral presentations, the readings, and lectures. I gave up around midnight when I could no longer keep my eyes open (and to think I used to be able to stay up until 6 am to study…) and got up at 5:30 to resume where I had left off.