Peruvian adventures from a British-Canadian!: Awesome hairdresser

Yesterday César decided to go to the hairdresser and I thought, I haven´t had my hair cut in a year, might as well go to. Well, it was quite interesting because the hairdresser was a transsexual lady and extremely bitter about life. You can only get an appointment by phoning. When we arrived she complained loudly that her style is to have one visitor at a time and now our haircuts were going to be terrible but she never said anything when César called to make the appointment! Anyway, she spent the 2.5 hours it took to do our hair complaining about Cajamarca. Now, I can understand the difficulty of being anything other than heterosexual in a place like Cajamarca. We are talking about an old-fashioned highly religious city which hasn´t quite caught up with the 21st century yet in terms of acceptance of anything a little bit different. Well actually I think we are stuck in the 70s here! In terms of local buisnesses it´s fabulous though as you can still go to the seamstress, butcher, glass maker etc., however tolerance is not something most people have. It is so bad that even tattoos and piercings in places other than your ears are seen as gang signs. However, when one chooses to come to a city like this (she is from Lima) you have to come accepting that. It doesn´t mean you can´t try to change it. If she put half as much effort into changing people´s close-mindedness as complaining she might actually be able to change people´s opinions. I think that instead of staying inside she should go out and let people get used to seeing her. I want to believe that after people get after the initial shock of her appearance they would forget about it, however I am a bit optimistic like that. I did have to talk to my students a few times about tolerance though, it´s disturbing when you hear grown, highly professional men saying degrading things about the homosexual etc. community. They always looked taken aback when I reproached them though and hopefully that gave them something to think about. If more people stood up for each other maybe things would change, right? Anyway, the lady showed us her paintings of Ancient Egypt which were awesome! We had a great conversation apart from her bitterness. She kept talking about another city and how accepting the people are there and I thought, why don´t you move there? It would be so much easier, and it isn´t like she´s fighting for change here, plus she seems to hate Cajamarca. But what do I know? She told me she doesn´t like white men, and apparently César is white. I had no idea. I had lunch with my previous host family and tried a new fruit for me called Kaki. It looks like a tomato but it tastes like a hard pear. It´s supposed to be really good for you anyway and it´s delicious! I´ve now finished teaching and am bored and want to work as we can´t travel yet due to the strike here and another strike in Cuzco, worst luck! César and I went out for supper on Friday night and look at my beautiful frozen lemonade. mmmmmm! So far the strike has been passive accept for the stupid cops who instead of keeping the peace hit people with their canes and kick over the farmer´s food. The police here are just arses and it´s not surprising as they are mostly not very intelligent and just follow orders. Yesterday Peru lost to Colombia 0-1 in the world cup eliminations so they probably won´t qualify. Despite Colombia having better players Peru played a respectable game and just missed a bunch of possible goals. Their players are young and unexperienced or old and tired though. On Friday César dropped me and I twisted my wrist. We bought a heat cream and put a bandage on it. I then had an allergic reaction to the cream and now have mini warts all over my hands and wrist so that is great. I bought an anti-allergic reaction cream and it hasn´t worked yet but hopefully it clears up. . It´s not exactly beautiful. This time next month I´ll be studying in Canada. Wow! Here´s a picture of César´s sister´s baby. Take care!