I finally caved and got haircut and pedicure on Monday. I haven't had a haircut since late March I think, so it was time, and I've gotten several comments on my gorgeous feet so peer pressure won. Luckily since this is Colombia and everyone gets their hair and nails done all the time, it's very inexpensive and there were 4 salons to choose from within a 2 block radius of my house. Not too shabby considering I have to walk like half a mile to get to the grocery store.


I walk around barefoot a lot (obviously) so I have callouses on my feet, and the floors in my house are reeeeally dirty (I wash my feet several times a day at home but it doesn't seem to do any good) so there was quite a lot of dirt ground into the bottoms and stuck under the nails. And the woman was clearly a little bit horrified, but she got working, quite aggressively I might add. She had this metal tool that she used to scrape a lot of dead skin or cuticle or something away from around my toe nails, and she really just went for it with the digging. She also rubbed a lot of dead skin off the bottoms of my feet, so they are now smooth and soft!

Only yesterday, I tried to play football with the same guys I usually play with, and it was SO PAINFUL. All the dead, hard, nasty skin on the bottoms of my feet was apparently serving a very important purpose of protecting my feet, because after yesterday I have two enormous blisters. Apparently I need to pick either 'Colombian feminine' with nice feet, or 'strange football-playing American' with nasty feet.