A cosmopolitan's short narratives.

“Welcome to the kingdom of my imagination. Welcome to the world of the unpredictable reality. I live in Florida (sometimes in Sweden). My country of birth doesn’t exist anymore (SSSR). I am writing in English and Russian about my day-to-day life and the experience of living in different countries, observation of people’s life, traveling and fashion. Welcome,” jelena717@gmail.com.

October 28, 2009

Becoming American.

Today’s story of horror,namely visiting a hairdresser, is something that usually gives a lot of pleasure to all everyone.

I had never had my hair done in US.  When I asked my friends about the price, they told me that it is really expensive, around $165.

I couldn’t continue with my hair undone, so I decided to investigate the market and see whether I could find a cheaper option.

A friend of mine, recommended that I drive to the Alve Institution, which is a school for becoming a hairdresser. You can have your hair done in the presence of a supervisor (who is supposed to help when a problem occurs) and get an affordable price.

"You get what you pay for," Does it sound familiar?

It all started with a hairdresser student, a guy who was recommended by my friend, and I was supposed to go to him, but he did not show up. After waiting thirty minutes, a supervisor sent me to another one. When I looked at her, I immediately felt immediately felt that something would go wrong. My intuition was telling me: "Take your handbag and get out of here”. But you want to be so Swedish and "polite," thus I stayed.

Since I wanted to do highlights, the girl started with partially applying bleach on my hair.  After an hour with bleach on my hair, she had not  even finished 1/5 of my hair. (I have to assure you, that God didn’t bless me with abundance of hair.) I was so worried , that I almost felt panic, and I implored her to check what was going on with bleaching part. I don’t want to dwell on all the problems, but I have to say that my only wish was to get out of there and keep what remained of my hair.

After five hours my hair was done and I was so tired that I even forgot to give a tip to the girl, which is a must here in US. Poor girl and poor me!

And now I am mostly concerned about  my tendency to forget to tip, since in Europe you normally do not tip for such kinds of services, at least it is not mandatory. However, I am starting to feel bad when I simply forget to add a tip.  That said, the next worry was that I became saturated by the American way of living so soon.

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