40,000 Later

The Deceiver, 2018.....

College has a lot to teach, but adulthood has even more lessons to teach this young woman adopted from Russia. When she struggles to find her true calling in the land of the free, she also learns that love isn't always what it seems to be......

The Deceiver, 2018.....

I woke up to the sound of the door slamming open from the force of the wind. The management of the apartments said they fixed my door, but I guess they never actually did. Both doors in my apartment didn't shut properly, so they could open just by poking them. So they have to be locked at all times to avoid this issue until it's fixed. I first was awoken by the sound of the garbage truck coming to take out the dumpster and empty it again at 6am. I was fortunate enough to live right next to the dumpsters for easy trash takeout, but unfortunate when it was time for it to be emptied.

I moved to Kentucky back in July of 2018 with my cat for school in the fall. I was signed up to be an Exercise Rider; a person who rides the horses every morning at 6am to workout. But, a month in I learned that the barn management part of the course was too hard for me. You had to walk and groom the horse, pick the hooves, check the horse's temperature, clean the stall, lay down fresh bedding, clean your aria in the shed-row, and feed the horse with hay and water in an hour. Sadly it took me three hours to do all of this, so the professor told me and I quote "dump out the water buckets, refill them to be hung in the stall and go home. It's shameful and embarrassing that it takes you this long to do everything." I dropped out of school three days later on September 10th, 2018. 

Having just a month off before the next school started, I quickly went over to sign up to try being a Farrier; someone who horseshoes horses. I signed up just in time, as school started on October 1st, 2018 and I was not looking forward to it. If I couldn't even muck out a stall, how could I handle forging? And how would I overcome my fear of fire to handle the forge? Well, this was the morning of day one at Farrier school so I guess I would find out everything for myself.

I made it a habit to be the first one to school, and I usually was. Even the students who lived on campus weren't always in class on time. But since I didn't know where to park or enter the building, I parked in the staff parking lot, and waited outside for someone to let me in. After sitting outside in the cold morning air for what felt like hours, another car pulled into the parking lot and parked randomly in front of the building. I watched the car impatiently at the thought of who would get out of the charcoal gray Jeep Cherokee, and to my surprise it was another student. A tall man who looked to be around seven foot tall with some facial hair and an unfinished tattoo on his arm.

 "Howdy there!" the kid shouted as he approached me. "Are you a student here too?"

"Yes," I replied, "I'm waiting to be let inside."

I let the kid sit beside me on the bench made out of horseshoes, and a conversation started. I found out he was known as Bubba, and he was from Buffalo, New York. He lives in his parents house around the corner from me, and has some cats and a dog. After talking for a few minutes, another car pulled up and parked next to mine; a silver grey car. It was the front desk lady, who let us into the building and showed us where the classroom was. Bubba sat at the row of tables facing the door in the back of the room, and I sat at the table in front of him. The room had three rows of six tables facing the entrance to the room. There were what I would later learn was coffin bones everywhere and amputated hooves used for studies on display.

There were I think 10 to 13 of us at the start of the nine month course we were all taking. And a total of around 24 students in the whole building. The school teaches you for three semesters. Beginners, middle advanced and advanced; each level three months long to total the nine months required to graduate. Once everyone in the class was gathered for the morning to start at 8am, the teacher had an announcement that none of us were prepared for.