Dyeing my hair for the first time in my life

Exchange calls for impulsive decisions, right?

Well... I dyed my hair. Brown. Dark, almost black, brown. On a very impulsive decision while I was out with some friends here in Arequipa.

What had happened was that I was meeting my friend , Mackenzie, for lunch at the mall. We had a delicious feast at Chili's, ugh it was so good and very well needed.

Another friend of ours, Charlotte, was having her hair done at a salon, as she regularly has to get it redone. So, we went to go to the salon while she was getting her hair done. Mackenzie decided on the way there that she was going to dye her hair purple. I wasn't surprised, she's the type of person that changes her hair color and hairstyle about every two months.

I then told her that I had been thinking of dying my hair brown for a while since I was in Peru. I was thinking of doing it while I was in the US in December, but it never happened. I was also always way too scared because I've never dyed my hair before and I do really like my natural hair color. And to dye it super dark would be super risky, especially if I didn't like it.

She of course convinced me to do it. I'm the type of person to make impulse decisions, but not like this. I even told her, you know, I'd go jump off a cliff into the ocean for the fun of it on an impulse decision for the experience even though you could die (that's totally NOT something I've done while I've been here, whaaat). But to dye my hair?! I can't... Because that's something you'd actually have to stick with. To some, my logic does not make sense. I suppose I can understand why.

We got to the salon. Charlotte was there with bright red dye sitting in her hair. Mackenzie was going to get purple in her hair. I thought a lot about it. Do I do a crazy color? Do I stick with the dark brown I wanted? Do I do all of my hair?

I texted my class group chat from back in Lima, and no one that was responding was really sure of what I should do. Or they told me not to do it.

I ended up settling on doing the underneath half of my hair dark brown. I was way too scared to go and dye all of my hair so dark. My hairstylist came over and gave me all the swatches I could choose from. I picked a brown that was about 2 shades short of black, and he thought I was nuts, but said it would look good. So, I went with that.

I had Mackenzie and Charlotte to keep me company as we all had hair dye sitting in our hair. Except mine had to oxidize a lot. And it was in the back, so I couldn't really see it. It came time to rinse it out, and having my neck lean against the edge of the sink like that was SO uncomfortable. It had been literally 5 years since the last time I had been to a salon at that point, so I didn't remember how uncomfortable they were, my goodness.

We went back over to the chair and had my hair styled, and there it was. My dark brown hair. Once my stylist finished, he was talking to another stylist making fun about how all of the Peruvians walk in wanting my hair color and how here I am walking in getting their hair color.

Once it was all said and done, it ended up being 100 soles, which is super expensive and way more than I anticipated, but I was still super happy and excited about it. It was also a very nice salon and it came out really good.

But the most fun part was yet to come, and that was sending a bunch of pictures to my friends of my only brown hair and making everyone think that I did all of it. As I said, I was way to scared to do that. Maybe next time I go in...