Boys may not want to read this.
Girls may not want to read this.
There is a certain amount of detail about my monthly bleeding in it.
So, I have managed to bleed on and off almost since I got here. Most of my knickers have been treated with salt (which only gets a certain amount of staining out when you don´t have a huge amount of access to hot water). Today though, today was insane.
Today I woke up and had that horrible feeling between my legs, got up, put in one of my terrifyingly huge tampons in as I knew niagra was on the way.
FJ and I have had a gentle day sending letters, writing postcards, finding an atm etc.etc. We went round a market to buy food and were treated to the sights of chicken feet and lama heads, it was rather exciting and we have a nice amount of fruit and veg provided by PachaMama for our Mabon meal. FJ amusingly enough has almost got more of a grip on Mabon than I, the Wiccan do.
Anyway, we were struggling to find meat that we actually wanted to eat when I suddenly really needed to sit down. I didn´t especially feel tired I just needed to sit. FJ says I sat down and suddenly wasn´t there – didn´t faint or anything, just wasn´t there. So I told him I´d meet him back at the hostel as I wanted to do girl stuff in the Pharmacia opposite.
I have no idea how I did it. Or where the Spanish came from.
I walked into that Pharmacia and said “Perdon” to the girl behind the counter, she took one look at me and dashed around the counter, grabbed me and dragged me to a chair in the corner. Then she ushered the pharmacist over (assume thats who the woman in the white coat was anyway), they didn´t speak English and I somehow conveyed by a mixture of bad Spanish, gesturing and that wonderful, wonderful thing that is communicating via shared female experience. You might be a completely different culture and have totally different social expectations, you might be a completely different generation and disapprove of me mightily but we all damn well bleed. For a few brief moments I knew the Spanish for the word coil.
I now have iron tablets. Also she made me take something that was possibly a glucose pill. I feel a lot better right now.
The thing that intrigues me is that had I taken FJ in with me we´d have managed much better with the Spanish but I knew I had the communication skills I needed. I´m not sure what I´d have done if they´d been men, probably found another pharmacy.
I love women. Sometimes I even love them when I´m enjoying being one. Never going to understand them though…
Gods bless women everywhere.