Just say...yes?

I wasn't planning on getting my hair done. I'm honestly still a little confused at how it happened. It all started when I decided to set out on my own to explore the city of Changsha. I didn't have a plan, a map, or a watch. I just left the hotel, turned right, and walked.

For three hours I wandered aimlessly through the streets, making random turns, and basically getting lost. I saw multiple McDonald's and KFCs (I swear there is one on every street!), a bookstore (in which I found a Spanish-Chinese phrase book), lots of construction (a common sight), people napping on the street, people walking their dogs (a lot of people have small fluffy dogs), a little boy peeing openly on the sidewalk (not the first time I've seen this, and probably not the last), and many surprised faces at seeing the blonde wai guo ren (foreigner) walking down the street. The highlight of my wanderings, however, was this:


A large ferris wheel in the middle of the city. Though it moves, it is not used as a ride. It it right above a large courtyard, where I stopped and rested for a few minutes while I took in the sights.

Eventually, I decided to get myself "un-lost" and hopped into a cab and headed to walking street, a large shopping area in the middle of the city. It was here where the real excitement happened. I was walking, looking at all the stores and people, when I was approached by a young Chinese woman. She spoke broken English and began asking me if I could come back to her shop with her so that she could style my hair. I wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do, but I thought "what the hell" and said "sure."

I was brought to a small salon (I think it was a beauty school) where after a lot of discussion in Chinese and English I agreed to let them do whatever to my hair (the picture they pointed to looks nothing like what my hair turned out as)...I had no idea how much hair they were going to cut off! Basically what happened was they essentially permed some of the bottom layers of my hair because the top of my hair was "too small" and needed to be bigger and they cut my hair into a style more extreme than I have ever ever had, or would have ever let anyone do to me if I had known what was going on.


In the end, I left the salon happy that I did not have a mullet and a little scared at what they had done. (I'm not going to lie, I cried when I got home!) But the style is growing on me. I will never get it cut like this again, but I do like the extra volume on top. And the experience definitely left me with a story to tell.

It's been less than two weeks, and already it has proven to be quite the experience. Stay tuned...I'm sure there will be plenty more to come.