Derek’s first haircut overseas

So I have traveled a good amount, but never long enough to need a haircut. Most of the time I just shave my hair off (much to the dismay of my family) so I don’t have to deal with it when traveling. Sadly however, Ashley would not want to be seen with me in public if I had a shinny, bald head, so I knew that sooner or later I would need to get a haircut.

Now, this might not seem like a big deal, but if you have seen some of the barber shops in other countries you’re never really sure if you are going into a barber shop or a dentist office. The last thing I would want as I go in for a haircut is to come out with no teeth! But alas, the time had come that I needed a real haircut. I could no longer wear my baseball cap into nice restaurants to hide the un-groomed mess that was sitting on top of my head. For a week I stopped and looked at a few barber shops to judge what they looked like and how it worked. I decided to get my haircut here because everyone here looked like a hair model or something. It’s crazy; I would say that they spend more money on haircuts than rent! Well, finally Ashley got tired of me saying I needed a haircut but not doing anything about it, so she drug me into the nearest barber shop. A middle aged woman took me in and told me to sit down in the chair. The only words I knew in Spanish that might help in a barber shop was “pequito” which means “little”, and I was not conservative in saying this one word as I pointed to all parts of my head. She looked at me for about 3 seconds, took out some clippers and buzzzzzzzzzzzzz, snip snip snip, buzzzzzzzz, a little more snipping, and finished! I looked in the mirror and to my delight saw a very nice trimmed up patch of hair on the top of my head. I said thank you and started to get up when the lady grabbed my shoulder and pushed me back into the chair. She then took out a large single blade old-timey razor, pushed my head down, and started to trim up the back, the sides, and even my beard! Now you would think that this would be all there is to a haircut but not here!  Remember, they take their haircuts seriously, so next she took out a pair of very pointy sharp scissors and carefully put them up my noise and trimmed my noise hair! Keep in mind that this caught me a little off guard since I didn’t even know that I had nose hair long enough to trim.  And before I could even process what had just happened, she put the scissors into my ears and trimmed all my invisible ear hair! Once all this was done, I got some very good smelling after-shave patted on my face, some hair gel, and was off on my way to show everyone that I also had a killer hair cut! It was not until the next day that I stopped to think about how many other noses and ears those clippers had been in, but by then…who cares.  Hair cut number one was a successes and the next one I get should be in china!!! Now if I could just convince Ashley to get one too….