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I was under the impression that I spoke pretty good French; that I was past the point of being unable to communicate and well into the land of the annoying but inconsequential grammar mistakes. It turns out that getting your hair cut in a foreign country is really difficult.

I found "Celine for Rachel Benaicht: RB2" on the internet through the bumble&bumble "salon locator" doohickey. Since I know absolutely nothing about salons in Paris, I figured that would be the safest thing to do. Anyway, after I made my appointment (over the phone, which encouraged me) I sat down to look up haircut terminology. I made a great big list, with words like "thinned out," "faded in," "split ends," and "It's too poofy, could you flatten it out?" Of course, as soon as I got on the metro I realized I had forgotten it on my desk. So I showed up at "RB2" with naught but hope.

When I walked in, I was put in my robe and made to sit around uncomfortably for half an hour (they had to move me once or twice to less in-the-way locations) while they finished their current coiffs. Finally, after feeling incredibly out of place for a very long time, my hairdresser walked over and asked me what I wanted. My hair, after two months without a cut and about a week and a half without a wash (I decided not to wash it until I got it cut, as some way of motivating myself to make an appointment or something - I ended up with really nasty hair), was frizzy and ratty and disgusting. Embarassingly so. I tried to stick to terms I knew, but basically everything I said boiled down to these two sentiments: "Shorter, but not too short," and "longer, but not too long." At one point I tried to bring up David Beckham as a reference, but that was unfortunately a bust. I guess he changes his hair too much. Celine, the salon owner, came over to try to translate, but she didn't do any better than I did. "You 'ave a lot of 'air," she finally said, and walked away. Anyway, I just told the girl to start cutting. I did manage to transmit that I wanted my hair thinned out as well as the sort of basic style I was going for - and she definitely came through.

Making small talk during the haircut was much easier than describing the haircut itself. My hairdresser was a very nice, younger French girl in her mid-twenties who was part Cantonese. She asked how much university cost in the States (answer: a lot) and other things of that sort of vapid nature. The salon was uncomfortably silent - no music, and basically no talking. It was fairly odd. I'm used to the Beehive (and to my homie Shelly, who basically just starts cutting as soon as I walk in - ask for her if you're in WW), which is very young and trendy and loud.

All in all, I was at the salon for an hour and a half, which is long even by Beehive standards. I think we were both glad when it was finished, even though I have to give props to the girl -whose name I never learned - she definitely performed admirably for having no direction other than "no, shorter," and "yes, good." It was definitely a humbling experience, and I encourage everyone to try it some time; thankfully now if I ever need a haircut again I don't think it will be quite so traumatic.