14

I have been here too long and I kind of love it.  By "it" I mean hair and fashion here.  (I have some fashion stories so this one is one devoted to hair! YAY!)  I have fallen head over heels for the rat tail.  Specifically, the Kazakh power braid.  My roommate decided to have two braids when we were living together: "To be like Chengis Xan."  This was one braid at the bottom of his hair and one on the crown of his head.  I was totally against it.  At first.

Then I started looking around town.  All the cool kids had power braids, the phrase which I decided they would be renamed to.  My person favorite look required a lot of forethought, and by that I mean the kids parent's had to decide that they needed a top power braid basically from birth.  Basically, you need about two foot of braid and a trucker mesh hat.  You were the hat jauntily on your head and have your braid come through the hole in the back of the hat.  PURE.  AWESOME!  (There was this one kid in my neighborhood who had this look down and was a snappy dresser to boot—skin tight shirts and cut off shorts with pumas—I kind of stalked him for a while.  Don't judge.  It was for fashion.)

Anyway, I decided to get myself a power braid.  So I learned how to say it in Russian, which is simply "tail," and took Katie with me to the beauty salon.  We walked in and she read her magazine in distaste while my new barber cut my hair.  I've been growing it for 3 months now.  I refuse to cut it before 2012 at the earliest.  I must say though that the hair at my hair line is fairly curly and my power braid is already starting to curl up. I kind of like, though I feel the need to tie it already as it makes my neck hot in the 100+ weather.  And before you judge my curly "rat tail" let me tell you it's no where as bad as the curly poodle mullets I see on boys or permed into old women here.  So there.

I forgot.  As we were leaving Katie ran through the various phrases of disgust and disbelief that I had actually gone through with it and this the end of that conversation:

K: So when we're 60 and friends and you come to visit me and we're playing Cribbage I'm going to mock you endlessly about that time in Kazakhstan you had a rat tail.

P: And I will whip you from across the table with my 7 foot rat tail and that will be that.

K: Oh god.  You would. You.. would..  /sigh. /laugh.