Dreads

From Friday, July 1

Well, today marked a new experience for me. I accompanied one of my students to Heredia to get his hair put into cornrows. Early on in the week he asked me for a number a place where he could get his hair done. I got a number from a friend in Monteverde who knows someone here in Heredia. By the time we got everything worked out, I had rather vague directions on how to get to this lady’s house in the city. I repeat, house. It was in some place called ‘Jardines 2’, the first right after the Universidad Nacional and in front of the red taxi stop. I was supposed to call her when we got there and she would meet us. We all know how that works out…
We were dropped off by a taxi in a rougher neighborhood where we spent 20 minutes looking for Shantell and waiting for her to get us. Her house was literally right in front of where we were standing, but she couldn’t see us from the house so she didn’t come out and get us. It was raining of course. : )

The process took approximately 3 hours. How in the world does it take 3 hours to do a man’s hair?! Well…when he has to get extensions (something I previously thought only a woman could get) it takes forever. And to boot, he didn’t even like it when we left. The cheerleader in me kept trying to boost his confidence by telling him I really liked it (which I did), but it wasn’t helping. Men…

My boss texted me at one point to ask what I was going to get done, but I think I’ll just stick to doing my own hair for now. I can’t imagine how long a full head of hair like mine would take.

Time to go home for the night,

Jessica Lynn

P.s. For the record, I was super impressed with the work Shantell did. I thought it looked amazing and she had the patience of a saint!