"Scenes From Salvador"

View of sunset from our balcony

Greetings from the land of rice and beans and disappointed soccer fans. I decided that periodically I'd do a post about our everyday life here entitled, "Scenes From Salvador." Warning:  The first part of this post may be something only women will appreciate.

So, after being here in Brazil for three weeks I decided it was time to tackle what every woman living in a foreign land dreads doing.  It’s the one thing that can make my knees go weak and reduce me to a babbling mess.  Facing the Brazilian office of immigration and foreign affairs you might think?  Wrong.  It’s going to THE DREADED BEATUY SALON.  Seriously, you try google translating, “Can you trim my hair, not the bangs, but just a little on the layers and not a lot on the length, and can you touch up my color, but only on the roots and make sure the color isn’t too dark, oh, and then can you wax my eyebrows.”  I think I’d be better at going before the senate and petitioning for world peace. I mean it’s hard enough for me to communicate to a hair stylist in my native language.  I go in feeling so sure of what I want and how to say it and then upon being questioned by the stylist, it seems I always start hemming and hawing and lose any semblance of confidence.  Maybe part of it is the awkwardness of talking to someone while looking at them and your self in a mirror.  I usually end up wanting to just say, “Do with me what you will, I give up!”

I heard a mission president’s wife say that she thought a lot more older single women would put in their mission papers if they could be assured of what they would do with their hair while living heaven knows where.  One president’s wife told me she took enough hair color with her to the foreign country where they were called to last three years and then trained her husband in the art of touching up her roots in the back of her head.  I suggested that maybe this type of training should be included in the Skype trainings given to all the mission presidents before leaving the MTC.

So, after doing my homework…And practicing what I THOUGHT were the correct terms, I made my way to a salon in a mall here.  Rule #1 when going to a new salon and you can’t speak the language is to carefully observe those getting their hair done so that when all attempts at communication fail, you can just point to another patron and say “I want that.”  The first patron I saw was a young woman who looked like they had smeared oatmeal all over her head.  That didn’t concern me nearly as much as the very large pink and yellow and bluish-green tattoo with leaves that looked like some sort of varicose vine growing up her leg.  But in the opposite seat was a very professional woman who had a haircut a lot like mine who was having her hair blown out into a lovely style. She would be my fall back plan.  The only problem was that by the time I was seated she was gone.  My only options remaining were the varicose vine woman and a man getting a buzzed hair cut.  I was clearly on my own.

This was definitely going to be harder than shopping at the grocery store where even though I usually have no idea what the cashier is saying to me, all I really have to do is put my groceries up on the counter and then hold out a wad of money at the appropriate time and pray that I receive the correct change. And then I just smile and nod and say, "Obrigada."  But in this situation smiling and nodding was not a good tactic. I  could easily end up inadvertantly consenting to purple highlights and a Brazilian wax!  

So, I started to try and tell the stylist my desires.  I immediately recognized the expression on her face as one I have come to know all too well.  It is the, "Lady, I have no idea what you are saying” look.  Had Google Translate failed me?  Rule #2.  Resort to pantomime when language attempts fail.  Whoever said my degree in theatre would have no practical applications?  After pointing to my hair roots and mimicking blow drying my hair, a smile of recognition came over her face.  Then she giggled a little and said something about the number six.  I had no idea what that was about.  She brought out a color card that had samples of hair color and pointed to the number six.   I enthusiastically said, “Sim Sim, isso e bom." "Yes, yes," I said, "That will be fine”.  As my color was processing, emboldened by making it that far, I decided to tackle asking her about waxing my eyebrows.  Once again, I received the blank stare of incomprehension. (that's probably not a word, but I can't speak English anymore either.)  “Hmm, they mustn’t wax eyebrows here," I thought.  I had no access to wifi or my dictionary and how would I look up the word, “tweeze” anyway?  I started miming pulling out my eyebrows with swift plucking movements which seemed quite appropriate since I really was ready to pull my hair out.  She started saying things I didn’t understand.  Suddenly I latched on to a word I sort of recognized.  “Depilacao!”  Yes!  depilatory!  From the Latin root "de pilare" meaning hair removal.  I had an immediate flashback of Sister Mary Agnes, the nun who was my Latin teacher in my Catholic school telling us that Latin was NOT a dead language and would be useful to us later in life.  She was right! How ironic, I thought, that I would think of her now, especially considering the fact that Sister Mary Agnes had a serious uni-brow.  And how ironic that I was now wearing a tag that had the title, “sister” in it too.  But it was no time to reflect on life’s ironies.  Within moments a technician appeared who was also on a mission. She did the most amazing things with a tweezer on my brows that I have ever experienced.  (a little painful yes, but very thorough)  So, to make this long story short, after about an hour and a half I left the salon properly cut, colored and depilated.  Mission accomplished.  And I realized that no matter where you go in the world one thing is for sure.  Women everywhere care about their appearance and will go to great lengths to take care of it. I felt like a new woman and I left feeling much better about the prospect of how I would survive here for the next three years.  I felt so good about my experience there that maybe next time I will get a pedicure.  I wonder how you say, "Can you paint my toenails?" in Portuguese? 


Here's another victory for us expats.  My latest "Holy Grail" find.  Little Tinker Bell here cost me 20 reais.  That's about ten dollars.  But after eating some of it spread on a banana,  I decided it was worth every penny.

Our food shopping scenario here is that there are some grocery carts in the garage of our apartment building.  We take the groceries out of our car and put them in a cart.  We then push the cart into the elevator (much bigger than the one we had in Italy) and we roll the cart right into our backdoor into our kitchen to unload it.  Megan, It's not exactly Harmon's Drive and Load, but the next best thing! 

President Lisonbee excited to be loading the groceries into the elevator

Grocery cart right in our kitchen

 

I'm hoping that this item on the menu of this fast food place isn't really what it says it is.

Offering the Book of Mormon to...well, everyone!

Thanks for letting me share with you a little slice of our life here in Brazil.  We continue to learn and grow and love our great missionaries.  We love you all and are thankful for your prayers.  They really do make a difference!  Until next week. Ate logo!