Haircut...Costa Rican Style

This past Friday the 17th, my exchange student friend, Jennifer, took me to a hairstylist that her mama tica had taken her to, to dye her hair. He works out of his home, which is right next to the university, because his salon was robbed last October. So now he's just working and saving up to get a new place to work out of. Anyway, so we go up and knock on the front door at nine in the morning, and Jen tells me that you have to be very persistent to get anyone to answer the door. The building he lives in is almost like a hostel, with a bunch of different people in separate rooms who share a common area and bathrooms and kitchen. After we knocked, I saw a woman's face peek through the curtains by the front door, but no one answered. We waited a couple minutes, went around to another side of the house, where we yelled "Carlos!" towards what Jen said was the hairstylist's room. No answer. Jen said that he must be asleep still. We go back to the front door and knock again and wait. Still no answer. We waited about fifteen minutes total and Jen finally said, "This is the first time I actually feel like giving up!" But just then someone answered the door. It was the girl I'd seen peek through the window. Oh, I forgot to mention that Carlos doesn't even know that we're coming. He doesn't have a phone, so Jen sent his friend a text telling him that we were coming, but never got a response. So as we climb the stairs and walk down the hall towards Carlos's room, I'm telling Jen, "I don't want to wake him up if he doesn't even know that we're coming," but she reassures me that it's fine because he needs the money. So we wake him up and wait in the common room for him to brush his teeth and get his styling tools. I told him that I just wanted a trim with long layers, to which he responds, "WELL, the style in Costa Rica right now is to do this zig-zag layering on the ends. All the girls are getting their hair cut like that." So I just said, fine, do what you want but don't take off a lot (in kinder-sounding Spanish words). He took about an hour and a half for a trim, haha! Jen had also told me that he likes to play matchmaker so she asked him if he had a a tican boyfriend for me, and he said, "Yes, yes, of course! He's coming in a bit to get his hair braided!" So the braids-guy, whose name is Christian, comes over and we all chat it up and watch Toy Story and futbol on tv as he's cutting my hair. I was anxious to go start my homework but then he tells me he's going to get curlers and that I had to wait a half hour with curlers in my hair! So I told myself, pura vida, just relax and enjoyed the conversation, which consisted of a lot of broken English and Spanish. And he actually did do a good job with my hair, despite my doubts. So there you have it, the most interesting hair cut of my life!


/IMGP6375.JPG">
/IMGP6372.JPG">