My New ($3) Haircut

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For the past month, I have been going back and forth about getting my hair cut. When I was in Korea, I had a pretty terrible experience at the salon. Long story short - the man gave me Korean-middle school student bangs and thinned my hair. Yes, he THINNED my hair. I already don't have a enough hair, you don't need to thin it!

Anyways, after that, I've been pretty wary of going to salons in places where there aren't many foreigners coming through.

Finally, this morning, I decided I couldn't take it any longer and needed to do something about my hair. I printed out a picture of myself with shorter hair to bring in and hopefully get what I wanted. Despite having a picture, it's still nerve wracking going in and trusting someone that you can't directly speak to to properly cut your hair.

So I asked one of our Chinese office assistants if she would go with me. We set out for the salon, and I got increasingly more nervous as we got closer. When we got there, my assistant showed the hairdresser (who had a really crazy hairstyle) my picture. He nodded, said he could do it, and off we went! After washing my hair, he sat me in the chair, took one more look at the picture, then gathered my hair in a low pony tail in the back and unceremoniously chopped it. Two inches fell to the ground immediatly. There was no going back. After that happened, I just had to trust that it would turn out all right. The stylist actually took more time than the stylist at home usually does, and after a few minutes, I started trusting that he knew what he was doing. He finished up after about an hour, and I think it turned out pretty well. The best part? It only cost me 20rmb or about $3.

Crisis averted.

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