La Parrucchiera

Well it has been a while since I have written and I am trying to figure out if it is because I have been busy, or just because life is beginning to feel so normal here that I don’t feel like it is exciting enough to write about!

Looking back on the last couple weeks I have been busying myself, with midterms, making plans for winter break, going to my first Fiorentina soccer game, getting my first Italian haircut, trying to convince the Italian post office to release my package (the stories are true, they are insane), and all the while going to class, volunteering, and continuing to get to know my city better.

I can tell that my language skills here are improving because as I write this in English it seems incorrect and I want to use the Italian words for a lot of things. I am also finding myself more confident to speak to Italians. When I got my haircut I was really nervous at first to make an appointment, I picked out a salon and would walk past it day after day, too nervous to go in and say anything. Finally the day came where my hair was just too long, so I went in, and I made an appointment, and it was easy.

The morning I went in I was nervous again and kept pretty quiet for the first little while. My hairdresser however was wonderful and he came over touched my hair and said “bellissima.” Then asked “you just want it a little shorter right?” I laughed because the night before I had told my host mother I was going to the hairdresser and she just looked at me and said, “No you’re not. Your hair is beautiful and curly and people with curly hair don’t need to cut it.”
I told him what I wanted, layers, more volume, more Italian, maybe some type of bangs? He told me he could do it but he was keeping it natural and soft (which also made me laugh because the Italian word for soft is ‘morbido’ which may sound like a good thing to them, but to me, not so much).

I usually get nervous even talking to my hairdressers in America, but I decided that this was a great opportunity to practice my Italian. Saurio and I hit it off immediately, he told me that he had visited California last summer, and loved it. He said he loved Americans, they’re much more relaxed he said, I told him he had visited the right coast. We chatted and then I also chatted with the girl who styled my hair. She asked if I was Italian, I said no, and she said, I thought I heard a little accent. Which is much nicer to hear than people immediately assuming you can’t speak the language. She then told me that with my new haircut I’d find my Italian knight in shining armor. I told her I had an American boyfriend, she stopped and looked at me shocked, that must be so hard! It’s true. Italians really do take the romance thing seriously.

By the end of my time at the hairdressers Saurio told me he loved my hair, gave me the Italian goodbye kisses and made me promise to come back again and I felt a lot more confident, not just about my hair, but about my ability to do normal things in a new language and culture.