Straight talk

HEY! IF YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ THIS POST MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH SUBJECT OF MENSTRUAL PERIODS. ‘CAUSE THAT’S ALL I’M GONNA WRITE ABOUT. DEAL WITH IT. IF YOU AREN’T, PLEASE MOVE ON TO THE NEXT ENTRY.

Imagine that you are in a foreign country and you are a woman. That should be somewhat easy. Now, you are smart and you did pack some pads or tampons in your overly heavy suitcase.

However, it so happens that you are in said country for over a month. As a result, your period decides that it wants to join you on your adventures more than once! You run out of materials (whatever you prefer to use of course) and then.....it begins.

By that, I mean the wild scavenger hunt that my mom and I endeavored in to find pads in Italy and Japan! Which, mark you, is no easy task.

I think I’m going to start with the times in Italy when we were fully stocked up on pads and tampons.

I will admit that when I got my period the very first day that we were in Italy, I did not take it well. I guess it was a combination of jet lag, homesickness and pure “Dang, I just got my period and I really don’t want to deal with it” I’m sure at lest some of you have thought that last bit before.

Anyway, I was in a bad mood for the first couple of days, but then it calmed down and I got used to it pretty quickly.

It is harder to continue to have the right amount of pads when there are two women who need to use them and a minimum amount of room. So when we ran out of pads in Assisi, the two of us trotted down to the local pharmacy and looked about. Alas, we only found tampons. Now you should know, that I don’t use tampons due to a rather difficult experience I had on a camping trip with my class when a friend of mine thought I was going to be poisoned by a tampon that she gave me in a time of need, I won’t go into that now though.

So...we had a few pads left and I thought that I was going to be fine...and I was, though I did get thoroughly pissed off when I realized that I couldn’t go to the spa by our house a bit later.

Then, we got to Japan. The main thing about that was how hard it was to navigate drug stores there! The packaging is completely different as well as the lettering.

On one rainy day we ventured out to a drug store that had every single thing that could possibly show up in any store (it had two floors). No one spoke English and we were utterly perplexed when we could find nothing at all. Then, one very helpful woman showed up and guessed what we were looking for and showed us exactly where the pads were! We think that she might have been some sort of good menstrual witch.

Later in Japan we were going to go to the most famous sento (Japanese bathhouse) in the world. Guess what, my period was feeling extra evil and popped up right before we left for the sento. At that point a had a fit about how unfair it all was that it was only women and blah blah blah. Then, as an extra cherry on top some intense cramps showed up and it was illegal to bring Advil into Japan from the states, so I had to just sit through it. My mom handled all of it with somewhat more control than me (probably more experience).

Overall, I think that it is a very cool experience to have your period in different countries and sometimes you might even meet a good old menstrual fairy godmother somewhere in Kuwait. You never know.

Love all of you strong people!!!

- Willa Marie