beyond cinderella

My daughter, Shantel, starts back to college on Monday, January 14, 2013. As usual, we made a trip to the campus to find her classrooms, and map out the best route for her to memorize and navigate her way from class to class. This year, Shantel has classes from one end of the campus to the other. So, we went to the student service office and obtained a campus map and walked from class to class looking for landmarks that will help Shantel find her way across campus alone. We started at a familiar landmark just across from the student service center.

The first landmark lead Shantel to the long hallway where she can use the sidewalk edge to navigate to the next landmark.

Which is this curved wall that leads to the wide open intersection she will cross.

At the intersection, Shantel knows to keep her cane directly in front of her so she doesn’t veer to the left or right until she completes the crossing. She will do this all while navigating other students, and even gulf like carts used my maintenance.

Once Shantel successfully navigates the wide open intersection, people, and gulf like carts, she will arrive at one of her classroom destinations. Great Job Shantel. Now, we can move on to finding your other destinations.

After our mobility session at the college campus, Shantel wanted to stop by one of her favorite stores, YES. That’s the name of the store “YES”. This store carries a wide variety of hair product and make-up  specifically designed for African/Americans. And, the thing Shantel loves the most about YES is all the products they sell are discounted or like she says “on the cheep”.

Shantel purchased two make-up compacts, and  two eye shadows.

She also purchased two placenta hair conditioners, and some pony tail bands.

After making these purchases, Shantel wanted to walk across the parking lot to the K-Mart store. Just as we entered K-Mart, and were starting to look around, Shantel told me she thought something was leaking in her bag from the YES store. I looked in the bag, and sure enough, one of the placenta bottles was almost empty because the top had not be screwed on tight. Shantel and I walked back to the YES store and explained the situation to the owner. He wasn’t too happy to hear our problem but he took the bag and began to lay the items out on the counter where he began to wipe the placenta conditioner off each item. I told the owner I wanted to get new eye shadows, even if we had to pay for them again because Shantel’s eyes are prosthetic and I didn’t want to take any chance that the placenta might damage them. He just kept wiping and telling me “it will be OK” . I could see the liquid placenta inside the eye shadow compact and had to insist her throw them away. Finally, the owner of YES said he was going to give Shantel another bottle of the placenta for free…but he would not replace the eye shadow because I made the decision to “throw it away”… after that, Shantel did buy two more eye shadows and we left the store.

Shantel also wanted to stop by another favorite store called Mid-K. Shantel loves Mid-K but they don’t always have the same make-up that YES carries.

As we were browsing around MID-K, I happened to look in the make-up section, much to Shantel’s surprise…there was her favorite make-up in the same shade she just purchased from YES. Mid-K even had the same eye shadows.. and, in addition, they carry a huge selection of hair accessories like these beautiful headbands.

And these adorable headbands.

And even this beautiful hair clip.

Shantel was so excited on scoring all these additional items at Mid-K and finding out that they now carry all her favorite make-up that she said “well, YES just lost a devoted customer, and Mid-K just gained one”.

All in all it was a very productive and fun-filled day!

Stay tuned!