“finding myself making every possible mistake”

I’ve been sitting on this blog entry for a while, not sure why.  I’ve known for a while I wanted to post it for comedic purposes.  One of the great things about living in another country is the gained (or expanded) ability to laugh at yourself.  I’m sure I’m often ridiculous in Ukrainian and worthy of the chuckles I’ve gotten, but it carries over to moments having nothing to do with negotiating language barriers.  Cross-cultural misunderstandings come in all shapes and sizes; some get resolved, others do not.  The most persistent cross-cultural misunderstanding I’ve had throughout my time in Ukraine has been my idea that a hair salon client has a say in what their hair looks like, as in America.  For your general amusement, I’ve decided to post a timeline of my Peace Corps service by changes in my hair.  It may not be thoughtfully written or reflective like my other posts, but hopefully you’ll find it worth your time for the laughs.

dark chocolate brown

<– Linnea says goodbye: Ukrainians are endlessly amused by my story of why I dyed my hair from blonde to dark chocolate brown.  Someone told me (and really, don’t all stories in which you make a horrible decision start this way) there were no blondes in Ukraine.  Other PCVs in Ukraine have all spit out their coffee or tea laughing already.  So, without question years and years of life as a blonde come to an abrupt end.  I buy plum lipsticks and try to work with it, and it makes an amusing Ukrainian dinner party story for the entirety of my Peace Corps service.

 

 

 

 

hot cocoa brown?

 

Throughout months of worrying over verb —> conjugation and finding ways to eat less than my host family wanted me to eat, my hair went largely ignored except when I was running late to language class and was desperately trying to throw it into some up-do that could be called a “do.”  The plan was to let it fade until I got home from Peace Corps and could easily lift the color back to blonde (for those of you not fluent in hair salon, don’t worry about it).  Halloween came to our training group and on early mornings I was still freaking myself out in the mirror because I was expecting to see a blonde staring back at me.

 

snip snip snip

 

<—I made it about five months; a valiant attempt if I do say so myself, but I’m sick of being a brunette.  My host sister takes me to the hair salon to go back to blonde in time for Swearing-In, but they say my hair has to be “really really dirty” to dye it back to blonde.  Strange.  So instead, I get bangs, which also never seems to be a great decision when I make it.  Nevertheless, off I go to possibly live in a village where I need to haul my own water with new, demanding bangs.

 

 

no caption needed

 

Yes, unfortunately, that would be orange —> hair.  Or, as my hairdresser in my new town argued with me…”it’s GOLD!”  The day had started off so well, too.  My friend, a fellow teacher from school, had brought me to see her hairdresser (also her fiancee’s younger brother), and we had eaten chocolate and drunk champagne for his birthday.  I had gotten a lot of Ukrainian practice in.  And then the big orange bomb dropped.  The best part is, I had to fly out to Copenhagen to see my family for the first time in a year with this disaster.

 

 

 

regaining normalcy

 

<—I switch hairdressers…as if I needed to clarify that.  My new hairdresser is a woman who runs a hair salon out of an addition to her home and calls me “Linnechka.”  She’s bubbly, moves constantly, and interprets my “I speak some Ukrainian” as “I’m fluent with a weird accent.”  After snorting into her coffee when I told her the brown hair story (didn’t I tell you Ukrainians love it?) and the subsequent “gold” debacle, she tells me she can’t fix it right away without frying my hair.  In the meantime, one step lighter it is with a shift from orange to pink tint.  Still not a color I would dare wear in America, but we’re getting better.

 

 

new year, new color

 

Off to Egypt with some fellow PCVs to ring —> in the New Year with my hair several shades lighter.  It constantly sways between a pink tint and a yellow tint because my hairdresser never seems to remember what color we used the previous time, and doesn’t listen to me when I call out the name.  There was a small incident with layers (called “stairs” here) which lead me to only ask for dyes and start cutting my hair at home instead.  Imagining myself lopping off a huge section of hair accidentally makes me dread the days when I finally admit my hair is more split than otherwise and needs a bit of a trim.  My hairdresser from home might kill me when I get back for what I’ve done to my hair.

 

 

what the...?

 

<—I didn’t ask for the Lady Gaga, but that’s what I got.  After months of barely perceptible shade change, this almost knocked me out of the salon chair when it was completely dried.  In no way is this an uncommonly bright shade of blonde in Ukraine, but it was a little too much bleach for my tastes.  My bangs are still growing out after that bad decision I made over a year ago, and I believe this brings the count up to six distinct hair colors I’ve had throughout my Peace Corps service in Ukraine (perhaps I got to choose one or two of them).

 

 

These days, my color has evened out, though it still swings between a pink tint and a gray/purple tint (I’ve been trying to get a picture of this insane sounding color, but have failed miserably) that washes out in two days leaving about the same medium blonde each time.  A fellow PCV and I had the somewhat unpleasant experience of being two unaccompanied blonde girls in Georgia, but enjoyed some gorgeous hikes, vicious vertical rock scrambles, and one heavenly morning in a private room at the baths that included the best massage I’ve gotten in my entire life.  My Peace Corps group’s Close of Service (COS) conference is in less than a month and paperwork has already started for leaving Ukraine!  I’ll be seeing all of you before you know it.

*Music: “New Soul” -Yael Naïm