I am by no means a 'vain' person. I like to think I'm pretty low key in that respect. The only thing that I'm somewhat particular about, however, is my hair... and its not like I even do anything interesting with it... a) ponytail, b) blow dry. I don't know why it matters to me that much... that's a lie, I do know why. I think it is rooted in the shman phase of my adolescent years. Luckily, senior year of high school I had to cancel a haircut appointment, and since I am lazy, I just didn't reschedule one. A few months later, I noticed that letting my hair grow past my chin took some of the edge off the shman-ness. It made me look more like my little sister, who has very feminine features, than my little brother, obviously a guy. I think now-a-days, 6 years post cancelled haircut, if I were to cut my hair short again, I could manage to still look like a girl due to some other key features... and the discovery of makeup. But the fear of looking like my eighth grade self again prevents me from trying anything drastic, unlike Hannah, one of my pals here, who admittedly changes her hair all the time. "It's just hair" she says, "It'll grow back if I don't like it." I feel that way about dying my hair- you can always dye it and if you don't like it, you walk down the street and buy another box of hair dye- but not about cutting it. And believe me, I've made some hair-dye judgement errors... one time I accidently dyed it so black that it looked blue. Corinne liked it. I waited a few days for it to grow on me. It didn't. I looked Asian from the back, no joke. Four days later, the problem was resolved.

So anyway, to sum things up, I am always anxious of cutting my hair, even though the amount that I let them cut off is usually so minimal that nobody would even know if I didn't tell them. Even during the summer, when I cut off 6 inches it was hardly noticeable. However, after four months without a haircut I began to notice that a lil trim-ski was in order. That was two weeks ago. Since then, I'd been vascillating between getting it cut and just waiting until I go home for Christmas.

Yesterday, I grew some balls, figuratively of course, and finally went to get it cut. Phase one included the hair-washing girl, who I swear to God was actually aiming that fire-hose strength jet of water straight at my ears (do I LOOK like a 90 ear old man with hair popping out of my ears that needs shampooing? I personally think not) Then the girl with the mullet, which is a supposedly fashionable look here and not white trash, says she's going to cut my hair and change it up a little bit. Oh boy... that's when you pray with every fiber of your being that you don't walk out with business in front and a party in the back if you know what I mean. (Oddly enough, these are the exact same fears I had two years ago when I dared to cut my hair in Sevilla. That had big potential to be traumatic day. Because for all I knew, instead of efficiently explaining what I wanted I was probably saying, "please, take an out of control lawnmower to my head.")

After she spends some time attacking my head with her trusty scissors, she's like, "ooh now we're going to 'style' it." Twenty minutes later, having watched my hair actually emit plumes of SMOKE as she blew-dry it (I was actually bracing myself for flames and being doused with a fire extinguisher), I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like an electrocuted french poodle. As soon as I walked out the door, her pruned creation that used to be my hair went immediately into a ponytail.

Now, having showered, it's not too bad. The moral of the story: I got a haircut and I don't have a mullet.