My 5 hour perm

So...I've been trying to limit my packing and was having a hard time because for my hair I was packing a hair dryer, two curling irons, a straightener, gel, mouse, hairspray, etc. It was starting to really add up. Then a friend of mine a few days ago was talking about a perm and I started thinking. How smart would I be if I got a perm so my hair looked gorgeous 24/7 and I didn't have to waist my precious touring/sight-seeing time doing it every morning? I've never had a perm before, but I figured I would give it a try. If I didn't like it, I could just bring my straightener and straighten it on some days when I didn't have it in a pony tail or something cute. Genius idea, right?

So I braved it. I wanted it to look like this:

But sadly they didn't have a lot of large rollers, so I had to choose between a regular hair cut, or doing a beach wave look. Here's what it looked like during...(it took 3 hours and 3 people just to wrap my hair and get to this point...no exaggeration!).

 

It looked like this after, but they said it will be tight curls for a few days and then straighten out  to more of the beach wave look.

So here's what I learned.
1) Perms are complicated
2) Perms take forever
3) Perms SMELL SO BAD
4) Get them done at a hair school, they're SUPER cheap
5) You might look like a poodle when you're done

I'm still not sure how I feel about it...but I'll give it a few days, and I guess we'll see what it ends up looking like.