Darling, don't you go and cut your hair

There's one rather major occurrence that I haven't blogged about yet, mostly because its only starting to be funny now.

I had an emotionally interesting period of time back in April and May where I wasn't sleeping very well, because I had stopped running for a variety of reasons and my body hadn't adjusted to the lack of endorphins. A lot of late night soul searching led me to the conclusion that Peace Corps was turning me into an old lady who is wasting away her 20s lounging about having the same conversations every day about weather and reading thousand page novels instead of getting a good paying job somewhere, going out and taking risks and dancing on tables or whatever it is 23 year- olds are "supposed" to do.
This general "God, I'm so boring" train of thought indirectly led me to debate cutting some bangs, since I hadn't changed my general look in quite some time. Also, I think I've had a repressed desire to do so since preschool when I tried to cut my hair in school and was stopped. I'd read enough fashion magazines to know that curly haired people should not cut straight bangs but still had an urge to try any way.

One particularly insomnia filled night, I'd given up on trying to fall asleep and was watching TV in my room. I've never mentioned the fact that I own a TV before, because I have pena about it because it seems like the kind of thing that is way too fachenta to have while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I didn't buy it, it was there when I moved in, but still.  I never owned a TV in the US, and probably never will. I rarely even use it, because there's only so many telenovelas, Caso Cerrado and 12 Corazones that one can take. OK, so fine, the TV (and my house) are pretty fachenta for Nicaragua, but not by American standards. For instance, I shower next to a parrot and bunch of chickens behind a plastic sheet. Peace Corps' definitely gotten cushier since the 60s, but that doesn't make it that cushy.

Anyway, there I was, changing channels at 2 am or thereabouts when I randomly chanced across an Italian movie that improbably featured Penelope Cruz. I didn't really know what was going on, she was involved with a married doctor or something, but in one scene she cuts off her hair, and of course, because it is a movie and she is Penelope Cruz, she looked really edgy and cool. "This is the sign I've been waiting for! The time for big risks is here! I should totally cut some bangs! I will look glamorous and elegant!" I decided, and proceeded to hack off a lot of hair with my handy dandy all too available pair of scissors. Right around the time I finished, the movie got really sad because Penelope Cruz' character dies from the complications of a back alley abortion. I might not have interpreted Cruz' haircut the way I did if I had watched the movie to the end....

The resulting bangs did not look particularly great. I should have known that glamorous and elegant, despite what taxi drivers have to say about me, are not adjectives that are very applicable to me. At least I did get a great adrenaline rush from doing something so ballsy. Once this wore off, however, I was pretty embarrassed for the next few months. Luckily, I have a reasonable sense of humor and self deprecation is my forte. For instance, one day in class, I was teaching sentence stress (ie what words in a sentence we emphasize to change our meaning) and I was using the sentence "I said, she might want a new haircut." I was using part of a lesson another PCV had developed out of laziness, but all my counterparts started laughing at me, thinking that the sentence was about my life. Unintentional, but true.

The bangs are still a bit of a mess, but they are finally growing out better. Unfortunately, they are a huge nuisance in the sweat inducing climate. Phrases I never want to see on a weather forecast again: "Real Feel 46 degrees Celsius."

There's a fine line between whimsy and madness, a boundary which PCV service often drives you to cross. Part of the problem, I think, lies in determining which rules from back home "apply" or don't, and which new rules are actually important. I think I've finally learned my lesson about scissors though.