I found our Surgeons

Like all other good vacations in Brazil, this trip too includes a long wise tale about a women and a beauty parlor.  As I lay on the table, all my other memories came flooding back.  However, much to my surprise hidden in the four cement walls of the neighborhood beauty salon (a.k.a, someone's house), I found Belem's most prominent surgeon.  Upon entering the waxing room and being dressed in my hair net, the beautician dressed in full "sterile" garb, hair net, mask, gloves, and gown.  If I didn't know better, I thought I was going in for surgery.  Furthermore, from all the hospitals I have visited, this was the best example of sterile technique I had seen yet.  It sparked an idea in me that maybe instead of nurses and doctors all we really needed is a good beautician.

As she meticulously plucked each eye brow hair, the intense focus and concentration on her face was something to marvel  at.  Either I have the most complex eye brows to wax or else this was her game face.  Envision her furrowed brow, squinted eyes, and I am sure pursed lips behind her mask as she silently completed her work.  One hair at a time.  

With what followed next, I might have been more concerned or self conscience, if this was my first experience in Brazil.  But much to my own comfort it was not.  The hot wax all over my face in fact was a soothing sensation.  Why when you ask for an eyebrow wax do they feel at liberty to include your entire face?  Either I am the hairiest ape Brazil has ever seen or else it's the common practice.  No one said being Burnett was easy.  

As time passed, I finally thought I would make it through with no cultural surprises.  It wasn't until the end that I suddenly found my self back at square one, nervous, sweaty, and stumbling out my poor Portuguese of, "no wait, what is that?  I don't understand, I don't speak Portuguese!" But despite my best pleaing efforts, the beauty surgeon lifted her cauterizing, facial blow torch, and began her work.  Similar to all good surgeons, do now and have the nurse explain later.  As sparks zapped the hair, an unpleasant twinge of pain could be felt radiating through my body.  I swear the only reason for the sterile garb was to hide the slight grin of pleasure I could feel oozing from behind her mask.  

But what would be a trip to the Salon with out a good story.  And if nothing else, I have found a solution to our problems.  How do you think she'd fair as a surgeon because if you ask me its the best chance Brazil has. Infection, leg hair, arm hair, beard, mustache, sideburns, eyebrow, and peach fuz free I am truly Brazilian now!

What Brazilian women can endure, it is no wonder they are tough enough to rule the world.  Well, at least the country for now...